Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/320

296 the reasons given by Governor Taft in opposition to it?

As you are in correspondence with President Roosevelt, I may assume that you have his ear. He will listen to you. Would you not make a suggestion to him, an impressive one, in the direction here indicated? You might thereby—possibly—render a great service to our dear adopted country; and I may say that the natives do not know how dear that country is to adopted citizens like you and me—dearer, perhaps, than to themselves.

As Mr. Adams has informed you, the task has been imposed upon me of making a final and comprehensive report upon the Philippine business. It is a hateful task. I am dreadfully tired of faultfinding, and my heart longs for something great to praise. But if things remain in the present state—I shall again have to do the hard duty.

I hope you are enjoying your summer. I am sure you are. What a handsome thing you did in giving Lord Acton's library to John Morley! You are indeed a happy man. 



The coffin around which we are assembled awakens great memories. I stand here as one of the few surviving contemporaries of our departed friend—a brother in arms of two wars, both wars for high ideals of human rights and liberty. The one was the insurrectionary war in the old Fatherland for national unity and popular government. It is a sad degeneracy of sentiment which of late has accustomed itself scornfully to scoff at that period of the “springtime of peoples” as it was then justly called. The many thousands who then were willing to sacrifice their lives for a great cause certainly need not be ashamed of