Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/438

414 his time, but also constitute his finest contributions to American literature—addresses and orations delivered at college commencements, alumni reunions, the unveiling of monuments, memorial services in honor of statesmen or soldiers, or men of letters, or public meetings held to shape, or express or stimulate popular sentiment on some matter of great public concern. Nothing could surpass the splendid architecture of their argument and the wealth and chaste beauty of their ornamentation. In what gorgeous colors he would paint the glories of his country! How he would revel in the memories of the heroic birth of the Republic and in extolling the grand and eternal significance of the principles which constituted its reason of being and its promise to all mankind! With what lofty sternness he would castigate those whose mean spirit failed to appreciate those principles! How vividly he would make to gleam and radiate the virtues and high aims and achievements of the great men who were the subjects of his eulogy! How magnificently his noble manhood and his American citizen's pride shone forth when he defined to the youth of his generation the nature of true patriotism—a patriotism that embraced all the human kind and had its source in the purest moral sense and in the profoundest and most courageous convictions of right and duty in the service of the highest ideals!

We shall know the character and the principles of the man best when we let him speak for himself in his own language. Listen to these words he uttered to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, addressing them on “The American Doctrine of Liberty”:

The real patriot in this country is he who sees most clearly what the nation ought to desire, who does what he can by plain and brave speech to influence it to that desire, and