Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/263

Rh its most glorious triumph in vindication of the same fundamental principles of the Republic, which it now tramples upon intoxicated with the lust of wealth and power—one of the most glaring apostasies that history tells us of.

And what have we gained by this apostasy? Not wealth. For all that wonderful material development we can boast of has not been achieved under the new policy, but under the old. The tremendous growth of our population, of our industries, of our commerce, the conquest of foreign markets one after another by our export trade, all this was accomplished while the country still observed the precepts of Washington's Farewell Address, while our “strenuous life” was devoted, not to the killing of men, the sinking of ships and the destruction of towns, but to the employment of the genius and the energies of our people in the pursuits of peace. It was accomplished before we conceived the barbarous notion that we must own the countries we are to trade with. Indeed, since we started on our career of conquest, we have increased only our expenditures by scores upon scores of millions to be paid by our taxpayers, not our foreign commerce on the whole. And as to the countries which were touched by our fleets and armies, only our trade with Cuba has respectably grown; and Cuba is of those countries the only one which we do not pretend to own. The rest of our commercial gain is in the uncertain chances of the future in which we can see only one thing distinctly—and that is that it will surely take the better part of a century to repay to us through the profits of any possible trade with the Philippines anything like the enormous sums which the Filipino war has already cost us. And nothing can on the other hand be more certain—a fact which I have repeatedly, but in vain, challenged the imperialists to deny—than that, if we had treated or did