Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/148

124 spirit of perfect impartiality, and endeavoring to find and to tell the plain truth without the slightest bias of favor or of ill-will.

The faithful performance of the unpleasant part of this duty has occasionally drawn upon us, now from Democrats and then from Republicans, the charge that we were chronic fault-finders—never satisfied, always discontented, sometimes even with what was done by officials who had themselves been classed among the civil service reformers. Those who make this charge do not consider that it is the first duty of this League to hold up the true standard of civil service reform, and to be dissatisfied and to find fault with everything that does not come up to that standard. If it failed to do this, it would not be true to the reason of its being. It would be as flagrantly guilty of dereliction of duty as a policeman refusing to repress a breach of the peace that happened before his eyes, or to give warning to the occupant of a house, the street door of which he found open during the night.

I find myself impelled to make these remarks by the unfortunate circumstance that we are now confronted by the duty of discussing the attitude of the present National Administration with regard to civil service reform under especially critical circumstances. As to its relations with President McKinley, we all know that this League accepted his early promises with warm demonstrations of confidence, and greeted with expressions of grateful approval every one of his words or acts that looked like a fulfilment of those pledges. It was profuse in its commendation of his order of July 27, 1897, concerning removals, although that order contained also the exemption from the competitive system of a much larger number of positions than it added to the classified service; and for a long time the League carefully abstained from