Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/541

Rh Blaine again. His election would be so burning a disgrace, so unmitigated a calamity to this Republic, that to help in averting it I should hurry to the front once more. 



Will you permit me, dear Count, to consider you as my confidential friend in the great world of Berlin and to encroach upon your time for a moment? Last week I found a notice in a Hamburg paper which referred to a report published in Frankfort about some remarks said to have been made by Prince Bismarck to “two prominent men from abroad.” This notice speaks also of a denial published in the Norddeutsche Allegemeine Zeitung. The reporter of the New York Herald, who called upon me here a few days later, told me that he had heard from the banker Bleichröder that I had been indicated as one of these “prominent men” and also that the words attributed to the Prince had been made use of for purposes of speculation on the bourse. Hereupon I tried to procure the originals of the Frankfort paper and of the answer in the Norddeutsche Allegemeine Zeitung. I have received these articles, and at the same time an explanation purporting to come from me, which appeared in the Frankfort Europäische Correspondenz.

All these things were entirely new to me. I have not yet the faintest conception what may be the source of these Frankfort publications. In America, where, by the way, the journalistic spirit of invention is scarcely more developed than here, I have learned to treat similar things with indifference. I would do the same now, if this case were not a rather serious matter for me. The