Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/100

76 We should, in the first place, restrict our standing armaments to the narrowest practicable limits; and those limits will be very narrow, if this democracy does not suffer itself to be carried away by the ambition of doing things which, as history has amply shown, a democracy cannot do without seriously endangering its vital principles and institutions. There is no doubt that a regular standing army is a more efficient fighting machine, especially at the beginning of a war, than citizen soldiery. But our experience has been that, in the peculiar position we occupy among the nations of the world, we need not have any war unless, without any compelling necessity, we choose to have it. It would be most unwise to shape our whole policy with a view to the constant imminence of war, there being no such imminence, unless we ourselves choose to create it. We should have as our main armed force, and as the natural armed force of a democratic republic, the citizen soldiery, to be called out for specific purposes in extraordinary emergencies, the efficiency of that citizen soldiery to be increased by the training of men to serve as officers, and by the organization of staff corps, upon a plan similar to that adopted in Switzerland. We should have a Navy strong enough to do our share in the police of the seas, but not a navy rivaling those of the great naval Powers, for, as our history has conclusively taught us, we shall not need it if we keep out of quarrels which do not concern us, and cultivate peace and good will with other nations—a disposition which the rest of the world will be glad to reciprocate. In this way we shall avoid the burdens and evil influences of militarism, and give even our pension roll at last a chance to decrease.

Following a policy essentially different from this we may have our fill of military glory and conquest, but with them other things which in the course of time will make the American people ruefully remember how free and