Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/424

400 not surprising that a peace argument should have been an awkward and somewhat bewildering task to him.

Every attentive reader of Mr. Roosevelt's oration will be struck by the bellicose flavor pervading it. It is really a panegyric on war. With almost poetic enthusiasm he describes how war arouses noble emotions, stimulates patriotism, brings forth heroic examples and how “no triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.” To be sure, he has also a word of recognition for the merits of peace, but it is rather of the conventional and perfunctory kind. Peace must be quite honorable to be entitled to respect, and Mr. Roosevelt seems to think that we must look sharp or peace will be as likely as not to become dishonorable and craven without our knowing it. On the whole he is inclined to believe that a long peace will have a tendency to make a people effeminate and unpatriotic, and that it will require an occasional spell of blood-letting and devastation to restore or keep up the necessary vigor, manliness, elevation of sentiment and patriotic devotion. Mr. Roosevelt in his combative ardor has probably not noticed the logical quandary into which he has reasoned himself. It is this: according to him a long peace has a tendency to make a people effeminate and unpatriotic, while war will invigorate a people and inspire patriotism. But he argues also that the building of a great fleet of war-ships will be a means not to bring on war, but to preserve peace. Ergo, the building of a great war fleet will effect that which promotes effeminacy and languishing patriotism. Mr. Roosevelt, according to his own theory, will hardly accept this result as satisfactory to himself. His argument in favor of a big war fleet as an instrumentality of peace comes thus to an untimely end.

In truth those among us who are really in favor of peaceable methods of adjusting international differences