Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/142

118 fice an innocent man for the honor of the French army and the prestige of the French Republic—who were the true French patriots, those who insisted that the hideous crime of an unjust condemnation must be persisted in, or those who bravely defied the cry of “traitor!” and struggled to undo the wrong, and thus to restore the French Republic to the path of justice and to the esteem of the world? Who are the true patriots in America to-day—those who drag our Republic, once so proud of its high principles and ideals, through the mire of broken pledges, vulgar ambitions and vanities and criminal aggressions—those who do violence to their own moral sense by insisting that, like the Dreyfus iniquity, a criminal course once begun must be persisted in, or those who, fearless of the demagogue clamor, strive to make the flag of the Republic once more what it once was—the flag of justice, liberty and true civilization, and to lift up the American people among the nations of the earth to the proud position of the people that have a conscience and obey it?

The country has these days highly and deservedly honored Admiral Dewey as a National hero. Who are his true friends—those who would desecrate Dewey's splendid achievement at Manila by making it the starting-point of criminal aggression, and thus the opening of a most disgraceful and inevitably disastrous chapter of American history, to be remembered with sorrow, or those who strive so to shape the results of that brilliant feat of arms that it may stand in history not as a part of a treacherous conquest, but as a true victory of American good faith in an honest war of liberation and humanity—to be proud of for all time, as Dewey himself no doubt meant it to be?

I know the imperialists will say that I have been pleading here for Aguinaldo and his Filipinos against our Republic. No—not for the Filipinos merely, although