Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/480

456 needs further proof of its courage or national spirit. Of those qualities at least the tremendous sacrifice of blood and treasure with which Spain has struggled to keep her grasp upon Cuba has given new and ample demonstration. In that respect, therefore, her national honor would not be jeoparded by submission to any fair demands, if such were made upon her on our part.

Neither would her national honor, in any sense, suffer by the abandonment of Cuba as soon as she has to admit that her rule over the inhabitants of that island can no longer be maintained. There has been a rumor that the proud Spaniard, when the loss of Cuba becomes certain, will then, for national honor's sake, provoke a war with the United States, so as to preserve at least the appearance of succumbing only to the superior strength of one of the great Powers of the world. No misconception of national honor could be more grotesque than the fancy that the moral dignity of a nation can better be saved by punishing one's self with an absolutely useless demonstration of willingness to shed more blood and to squander more wealth and to create more misery, than by a wise and decorous acceptance of the inevitable. It is a monstrous notion, which can have sprung only from some very much overheated brain; but it fairly illustrates the strange confusion of ideas in which national honor figures as something that stands above the dictates of common-sense, as well as of common morality.

We have had much of this wild sort of talk in this country, and we may have more. But there is good reason for hoping that it will not run away with the self-respect of the American people. We may well be proud of the self-contained dignity with which so far President McKinley and his Ministers have conducted our foreign affairs amid the excitements of the day; proud of the well-nigh unanimous applause which the calm attitude of those