Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/286

262 between civilized nations means now a rupture of arteries of common life-blood, a stoppage of the agencies of common well-being and advancement, a waste of energies serviceable to common interests—in one word, a general disaster, infinitely more serious than it did in times gone by; and it is, consequently, now an infinitely more heinous crime against humanity, unless not only the ends it is to serve fully justify the sacrifices it entails, but unless also all expedients suggested by the genius of peace have been exhausted to avert the armed conflict.

Of those pacific expedients, when ordinary diplomatic negotiation does not avail, arbitration has proved itself most effective. And it is the object of the movement in which we are engaged to make the resort to arbitration, in case of international difficulty, still more easy, more regular, more normal, more habitual and thereby to render the resort to war more unnatural and more difficult than heretofore.

In this movement the Republic of the United States is the natural leader, and I can conceive for it no nobler or more beneficent mission. The naturalness of this leadership is owing to its peculiar position among the nations of the earth. Look at the powers of the old world; how each of them is uneasy watching the other; how conflicting interests or ambitions are constantly exciting new anxieties; how they are all armed to the teeth and nervously increase their armaments, lest a hostile neighbor overmatch them; how they are piling expense upon expense and tax upon tax to augment their instruments of destruction; how, as has been said, every workingman toiling for his daily bread, has to carry a full-armed soldier or sailor on his back, and how, in spite of those bristling armaments, their sleep is unceasingly troubled by dreams of interests threatened, of marches stolen upon them, of combinations hatched against them