Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/486

462 and their calling. They are to be the right arm of patriotism in times of conflict. Patriotism wishes them not only to be able to fight, but also to like fighting when fighting is necessary. But the same patriotism forbids them to clamor for a fight so long as fighting is not necessary. If officers of the Army or the Navy should ever use their influence to bring on a war while peace might honorably be maintained, to furnish them opportunity for showing how brave and skilful they are, and to increase their chances of promotion, they would be just as unpatriotic—aye, just as criminal—as the members of a fire department would be who try to set a tenement house ablaze for the purpose of exhibiting their skill in handling an engine or their courage in scaling ladders, and of thus earning praise and advancement. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a wantonness of spirit more reckless, more wicked, more repugnant to true patriotism, than the use of what ever influence one may possess to bring on war, with all its horrors and miseries, so long as the possibility of preserving an honorable peace has not utterly vanished.

If, in spite of all efforts to avert it, war does come, the duties of patriotism are the same for all, of whatever shade of opinion—for those who did not approve of the cause of the quarrel as much as for those who did. Patriotism then demands that we should all unite with the same faithful devotion in doing the best we can to make the shortest possible work of the struggle, and to secure a speedy issue honorable and advantageous to our country. It demands that we should carefully abstain from endangering the operations of our armies or navies by giving information to the enemy, and that, among other things, we should sternly curb that spirit of journalistic “enterprise” which, for instance, now is so busy advertising to the whole world the military and naval plans of our Government. It demands that we should always be