Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/548

524 is true enough. But we have to consider that, since those things have been by him injected into this campaign in so prominent—I might say so ostentatious—a way, we cannot elect him without seemingly countenancing this sort of imperialism—at any rate, we cannot elect him without approving and encouraging the annexation policy so far as it may go at present—for that is what he has emphatically told us his election is to mean. We cannot elect him without making him in a large sense the spokesman of the State of New York as to these things—and we may count upon it that he would not be silent.

Moreover, it is by no means improper to point out the fact that an election to the governorship of New York, as it repeatedly has been, may again become, in Colonel Roosevelt's case, the stepping-stone to the nomination for the Presidency. Indeed, it is in everybody's mouth that if Colonel Roosevelt succeeds, it will be so. I am, therefore, not dealing with a vague and remote contingency, but with a question of immediate interest which will call for actual decision in less than twenty months, when I say that we have to consider the probable effect of Colonel Roosevelt's election to the governorship from this point of view.

Colonel Roosevelt deserves much honor for his gallant conduct in the Santiago campaign. He is, no doubt, one of the bravest of soldiers, and if I had the power, I would, in case of another war, give him any number of Rough Riders to command, with perfect confidence that he would acquit himself gloriously. But I would not put him in a position, nor open to him the way to a position, in which he would exercise any influence upon the foreign policy of the Republic; for I candidly believe that, owing to his exceptionally bellicose temperament and to the sincerity of his fantastic notions as to the bodily exercise the American people need to keep them from Chinese