Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/428

404 irrelevant. Being thus exposed you have, as a last resort, sought refuge in an appeal to Republican party feeling against those who are supposed to be mainly active in the movement for civil service reform. You say, for instance:

When it is remembered that Carl Schurz, the president of the League of which George McAneny is secretary, once occupied a seat in the Senate, and is now in private life, a traitor to the Republican party and its principles, I am willing to have the people of New Hampshire (rather than McAneny, whoever he is) pass on the question of my intelligence and integrity.

Pardon me, Senator, for saying a word on my relations to “the Republican party and its principles.” Last year when the Presidential contest had assumed the character of an issue between sound money and free-silver coinage, the chiefs of the Republican campaign committees, and at least one of the candidates on the Republican national ticket, applied to me, your “traitor to the Republican party and Republican principles,” for help. I did take part in the campaign. The help I gave may have been very insignificant. You may never have heard of it. You were probably so much in demand and so hotly engaged in the thick of the fight, and your voice may have so powerfully resounded all over the field, drowning feebler noises, that my modest efforts escaped your notice. At any rate, whatever help I gave, whether much or little, went to the benefit of the Republican candidates. It was a free gift. There was not the slightest desire or expectation of reward. I may say, however, that the Republican campaign managers were profuse in warm—and no doubt, sincere—words of acknowledgment.

That now a Republican in the prominent position of a Senator should so fluently denounce me as “a traitor to the Republican party and to Republican principles” is, to say