Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/401

Rh American flag must never be hauled down is a vain and foolish cry, and that the flag was never more glorious than when it was hauled down from Morro Castle at Havana.

Here, then, is what has become of the great Republican party—once the party of liberty and human rights, the party of moral ideas: It has become the advocate and servant of a combination of pecuniary interests, in maintaining a high protective tariff going far beyond its professed objects, despoiling the many for the benefit of a few, and striving to keep itself in power by a system of corruption organized on a national scale. It has by a policy of adventure, conquest and arbitrary rule over subject nations set aside the fundamental principles upon which this Republic was founded, and thus dangerously weakened in our democracy the highest conservative influence—the popular adherence to our traditional doctrines and ideals. It has robbed the American people of the inestimable privilege of being exempt from the burden of enormous armaments under which other nations are groaning, by imposing, without the slightest necessity, similar burdens on our backs. It has thereby not only ceased to countenance and inspirit the efforts made in favor of the direction of general disarmament, but, disquieting other powers by our building a great war-fleet quite superfluous except for aggressive purposes, it is inciting them to follow suit, thus speeding the ruinous race and ranging the American republic among the instigators of a retrogressive tendency hostile to true civilization.

We may now ask ourselves whether the character of the Republican candidate for the Presidency redeems the character of the party. I know President Roosevelt well. I have known him well since, as a very young man, he entered public life, and I have watched his career,