Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/534

510 at his toil, will have to carry a soldier or sailor on his back. There will be glorious chances for speculative adventure to accumulate colossal fortunes, huge corruption funds and no end of spoil for the politicians and grinding taxation for the people who have to pay the bills.

Meanwhile, by turning the war advertised so loudly as a war of liberation and humanity into a war of conquest, a land-grabbing foray, the American democracy will have lost its honor. It will stand before the world as a self-convicted hypocrite. It will have verified all that has been said in this respect by its detractors. Nobody will ever trust its most solemn declarations or promises again. Our American sister republics will, after so glaring a breach of faith, be alarmed for their own safety, feeling themselves threatened by the unscrupulous and grasping ambition of the American people, and become the open or secret enemies of the United States, ready to intrigue against this Republic with European Powers—a source of more warlike troubles.

And what will become, with all this, of the responsibility of the American people for the maintenance of “the government of the people, by the people, for the people,” and of our great mission to further the progress of civilization by enhancing the prestige of democratic institutions? It will be only the old tale of a free people seduced by false ambitions and running headlong after riches and luxuries and military glory, and then down the fatal slope into vice, corruption, decay and disgrace. The tale will be more ignominious and mournful this time, because the opportunities had been more magnificent, the fall more rapid and the failure more shameful and discouraging than ever before in history.

This may seem an exaggerated picture. I admit that it is lurid. But I ask any candid man to examine it, touch by touch, and then to answer the question whether