Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/477

Rh dignity would permit, this great Republic to swagger about among the nations of the world with a chip on its shoulder, shaking its fist under everybody's nose, and telling the world on every possible occasion that we can “whip” any Power that might choose to resent this, and that we would be rather glad of an opportunity for doing so. A private individual taking such an attitude would certainly not be called a gentleman. He would be considered a vulgar bully. If a person of great physical strength, he would be feared by some, esteemed by nobody and heartily detested as a public nuisance by the whole decent part of the community. A nation playing such a rôle would deserve and meet with the same judgment in the family of civilized nations, and at the same time it would cultivate within itself those forces of evil which are always developed by a perversion of the sense of honor, and the consequent loss of true moral dignity and of genuine self-respect.

Neither would any American having the honor of his country sincerely at heart find it compatible with the true moral dignity of this great Republic that the American people should always be nervously on the lookout for something to offend or affront it, and eager to construe as a grievous injury or a deadly insult anything in the slightest degree capable of an unpleasant interpretation, in order to avenge it. He would remember the common experience of private life that the honor of the “hero” of many so-called “affairs of honor,” the ever-ready duellist, is apt to be not the genuine article, and that few things are more derogatory to the character of a gentleman than a propensity to pick unnecessary quarrels—that is, quarrels which might honorably be avoided. There is one duty which strong men and strong nations that are imbued with a strong sense of honor will never forget. It is that the strong should scrupulously abstain from abusing their