Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/180

156 stantially true to the most essential principles upon which it was founded, and especially to Washington's precepts concerning its intercourse with the outside world, the Republic has achieved a measure of development in wealth, greatness and power that has in a like space of time never been equaled by any nation in history.

But now we are told that we have come to a turning-point; that the very power we have won in walking that providential path obliges us to strike out in a different direction; that we must no longer content ourselves with making this vast continent the home of a free, peaceable and happy people, with an honest endeavor to solve on this virgin soil the momentous problem of popular self-government, and with advancing the cause of liberty and civilization among mankind by the moral force of our example, but that we must give up the priceless privilege of unarmed peace; that we must have big fleets and armies in order to play a new part in the affairs of the world; that we must become conquerors to spread our commerce and have far-away possessions and rule foreign peoples as our subjects—no matter what the original design of our Republic and the fundamental principles of our democracy may have been. And when the advocates of this new course are hard pressed in argument, they always resort, as their last refuge, to the plea that Providence has precipitated us into this new course, and that it is vain to resist.

Nobody can be less disposed than I am to pose as a mouthpiece of Providence. But I do maintain that when we speak of something having been so ordained by Providence that no human being could be held responsible for it, we can only mean that the will of man one way or the other could not play a determining part in it. In this sense it may be said that geographic, climatic and other such conditions, which made the building up of a great