Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/522

498 liberty,” and giving no end of opportunity to the political jobber and the demagogue? In this way wars are far more dangerous to democracies than to monarchies, for the reason that by the agencies of public demoralization democracies are far more mischievously attacked in the vital conditions of their being.

How far such mischief will be wrought by our war with Spain will depend upon its duration, upon the extent to which it withdraws popular attention from our home concerns, and upon its results as to the future policy of the United States. However justifiable and even praiseworthy this war may appear to us, it is useless to deny that the mere fact of the great American Republic having gone to war without absolutely evident and generally accepted necessity, has hurt the prestige of democratic government in an important respect. Critical observation of the goings on in the United States and in the French Republic has of late years seriously shaken what there was of popular belief that republican government was necessarily the most honest and economical and the wisest imaginable government. But mankind still did believe— especially judging from the fact that the United States, with all their wealth and strength, did not find it necessary to keep up any large armament—that republican government was by its natural tendency a guaranty of peace. That this belief, too, has been, justly or unjustly, shaken by our war with Spain must be considered as a serious hurt to the prestige of republican government generally.

This hurt may be very much aggravated, or it may be greatly lessened, as the American people make this or that use of their victory over Spain. Aside from the question whether the war was necessary even for the avowed purpose of it, the attitude assumed by the United States as to the object to be accomplished by the war was entitled