Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/131

Rh doctrine refers to nothing else but to the establishment of new colonies by European Powers upon American soil. The Monroe doctrine is a veto against that and nothing else; it has no connection whatever with the acquisition of territory by the United States. If the Senator pretends that my argument fails, he shows only how weak his is and to what desperate straits those are reduced who want to frighten us with the European bugbear into an improper enterprise.

There is another reason why I think Germany will not covet that possession, and I will state it. Germany has already the very best system of colonization that ever existed in the history of the world. While Germany does not own a single square foot of ground outside of her continental possessions, with the exception of the little islands on her coast—not one—yet, I repeat, she has the most perfect and most beneficial colonial system that ever existed. It will have been noticed that of late years the German commercial marine has developed in a greater proportion, perhaps, than the commercial marine of any of the maritime nations. Germany had no numerous fleet of war vessels to protect her commerce. Germany had no colonies, in the ordinary sense of the term, to nourish that commerce. But Germany had something far better. Instead of keeping up colonial establishments, for which the home Government is politically responsible, and which it is bound to protect and defend with arms, Germany has clusters of mercantile establishments in every commercial town on the globe—in Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Australia—colonies not political, but colonies commercial, which protect themselves, regulate themselves and feed German commerce of their own motion, without imposing upon the mother country the remotest political responsibility.

This colonial system has proved of infinitely less trouble