Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/281

Rh but peace with honor. Let us understand, however, what the honor of this great American Republic consists in. We are a very powerful people—even without an Army or Navy immediately ready for action, we are, in some respects, the most powerful people on earth. We enjoy peculiar advantages of inestimable value. We are not only richer than any European nation in men, in wealth and in resources yet undeveloped, but we are the only nation that has a free hand, having no dangerous neighbors and no outlying and exposed possessions to take care of. We are, in our continental position, substantially unassailable. A hostile Navy may destroy what commercial fleet we have, blockade our ports, and even bombard our seaboard towns. This would be painful enough, but it would only be scratching our edges. It would not touch a vital point. No foreign Power or possible combination could attack us on land without being overwhelmed on our own soil by immensely superior numbers. We are the best fitted, not, perhaps, for a war of quick decision, but for a long war. Better than any other nation we can, if need be, live on our own fat. We enjoy the advantage of not having spent our resources during long periods of peace on armaments of tremendous cost without immediate use for them, but we would have those resources unimpaired in time of war to be used during the conflict. Substantially unassailable in our continental fastness, and bringing our vast resources into play with the patriotic spirit and the inventive genius and energy of our people, we would, on sea as well as on land, for offensive as well as defensive warfare, be stronger the second year of a war than the first, and stronger the third than the second, and so on. Owing to this superiority of our staying power, a war with the United States would be to any foreign nation practically a war without end. No foreign Power or possible combination in the old world can,