Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/398

374 to the principles and ideals to which this Republic owed its origin. We have only to take again as our guide that solemn admonition—nowadays so thoughtlessly slighted by giddy youths—Washington's Farewell Address, the wisest counsel ever left to his people by a great patriot. We have only to stop thinking of the conquest of other peoples lands and goods, and aim instead at the conquest of their esteem and confidence, which will be not only a more honorable, but, even commercially speaking, a much more valuable asset in the long run. We have only to convince the world that we do not worship at the shrine of physical force, that barbarous relic of the past; but that we cherish only the moral power of genuine civilization and true progress, which are to open to mankind a happier future. I say this at a moment when the newspapers are filled with reports of the conflict going on in the Far East—one of the most horrible butcheries recorded in history, which, instead of inflaming by its horrors the fighting spirit among nations, should—and, I trust, will—demonstrate to them the downright atrocity, the hideous criminality of war, and the absolute necessity of preventing any resort to it by every means the humane spirit of our civilization can suggest.

No, this ideal I have described is not impossible of realization. Indeed, we actually approached that realization when, in putting an end to Spanish rule in Cuba, we promised that Cuba should not be our conquest, but a self-governing republic, and when, in a great measure at least, we fulfilled that promise. The outside world, which had cynically doubted the sincerity of that promise, pricked up its ears and came very near believing that such an act on our part might really have been inspired by a generous, self-sacrificing desire to liberate another people from despotic rule, without any