Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/266

242 proclaimed war of liberation and humanity into a war of land-grabbing conquest, criminal aggression and subjugation, thus destroying the belief of mankind in the sincerity of our virtuous profession, branding us as a nation of hypocrites and destroying our moral credit with the world. It has seduced us to commit the meanest misdeed a nation can commit—the crafty betrayal of an ally and the wanton slaughter of innocent people. It has made our former friends in the conquered countries hate us with an undying hatred. It has involved us in an unnecessary, wicked and abominable war that has already cost us thousands of American lives and nearly two hundred millions of money, and will cost incalculably more. It has made our President commit a flagrant usurpation of power which, if condoned and permitted to stand as a ruling precedent, will become most dangerous to our free institutions. It has put to contempt and ridicule the fundamental principles of our democracy and is undermining the popular belief in our old ideals of right, justice and liberty, which alone furnish the conservative element indispensable to a democracy working through universal suffrage. It has taught our people that might makes right, and other like lessons, which, unless sternly rebuked, will utterly demoralize public sentiment and transform the political life of our democracy into wild, unscrupulous and, eventually, anarchistic struggles of selfish passions and greedy interests.

It has done something more which is alarmingly characteristic of its tendencies. In this Republic, which should be governed by an intelligent and well-informed public opinion, it has introduced one of the most insidious practices of despotic governments—a censorship of news. That censorship has largely falsified and still more largely concealed from the knowledge of the people the information to which the people are entitled as citizens called