Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/51

Rh of that intuitive genius with which but very few men in a century are endowed to make his administration successful without that experience.

Now put, for the sake of argument, in that most trying position, General Hancock or any man trained exclusively in the walks of army life, of which he is so conspicuous an ornament—I mean a man not endowed with that intuitive genius which I have spoken of, and which even his most ardent friends, as I understand, do not claim for General Hancock. What has there been in the school of his past life to fit him for it? As a boy he was accepted by the Government as a cadet at West Point, and that was his college and university. I have high respect for that military school. Every branch of military science is taught there, I have no doubt, with knowledge, skill and success. The principles of military honor and the great law of command and obedience are inculcated as the guiding stars of the future life of the student. The affairs of ordinary human existence outside of the military profession, and the problems it has to deal with, are necessarily treated as matters of only secondary moment. Our military school at West Point has given us many glorious soldiers who have adorned the history of the country; but it has never been pretended that it was meant to be, or was, a school of statesmanship. That school absolved, the young man entered into the regular army service. Of all classes of our society it may be said that our regular army is the most exclusive, the most widely separated from the ordinary business life of the people in point of sympathy, duty and habit. If we have an apart class among us, a class whose contact with the cares and endeavors and business and objects of the life of the masses is only occasional and unsympathetic; a class that in its ideas and aims is separated from the multitude, it is the officers of the regular army. This is not meant to