Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/178

154 wisdom of his policies, the most perfect model of a republican chief magistrate in the history of the world—a President to whose teachings and example all his successors—indeed, all those wielding public power in this Republic—could with the utmost confidence look for safest guidance. Surely, no other nation has ever been so signally blessed.

The third unique providential favor enjoyed by the American people consists, owing to their geographical situation, in their happy exemption from those embarrassments and dangers by which other nations, being in constant touch with powerful, jealous and possibly hostile neighbors, feel themselves obliged to keep up vast, burdensome and constantly increasing armaments on land and sea. For more than three-quarters of a century—a war of our own making and the period of our civil conflict excepted—the American people have enjoyed the inestimable boon of a substantially unarmed peace in perfect security. Until recently we valued this priceless privilege so heartily and proudly that we looked down with pitying superiority upon the nations of the Old World, seeing them grievously burdened with their monstrous military and naval establishments; and we watched with an almost disdainful smile their incessant efforts to increase those burdens in their nervous anxiety lest some rival might get an advantage; until at last one of their mightiest rulers truthfully confessed that the ruinous competition could not much longer go on without fatal consequences. And we were the only great nation on earth securely free from these drag weights and worries.

This is no mere fancy picture. The history of a century bears it out. Excepting the period of our civil war, we had, compared with other great powers, neither army nor navy. And yet our rights and our honor were safe all over the globe. The greatest sea-power on earth yielded to us far more deference than to any other nation. Why