Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/240

216 ability. Determined to keep it loyally to the end of my days, I stand here now to defend those principles against an attack even more crafty and dangerous than that which in times gone by was made upon them by the power of domestic slavery, and which was beaten back by the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. I mean the attack now made by the policy of imperialism as carried on by the present Administration.

Let me say at the start that I consider the manner in which the imperialistic policy is being commended by some persons to popular approval, the hugest confidence game ever practiced upon a free people. In my whole long life I have never known of such systematic use of distortion of history, hypocritical cant, garbling of documents and false pretense. I am here to speak a word for truth and justice; and in doing so I shall call things by their right names. You will pardon me if those names are not always of the mildest. For I must confess, when I witnessed some of the means employed to lure this great Republic from the path of righteousness, high principle and glorious destiny, my old blood boiled with indignation.

The partisans of the Administration object to the word “imperialism,” calling it a mere bugbear having no real existence. They pretend that in extending our sway over Porto Rico and the Philippines we merely continue that sort of territorial expansion which has been practiced by this Republic from its beginning. This is a mere juggle with words amounting to a downright falsification of history.

The truth is that until two years ago this Republic did indeed add to its territory, but never without the intention and well founded expectation that the acquired soil would be occupied by a population of our own or at least homogeneous with our own, and that it would in course of time be formed into regular States of this Union under our