Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/75

Rh ordinarily, in doing the business of an autocrat, he may be no better, and in some respects even worse, than others engaged in the same trade.

But however that may be, and whatever results the peace conference meeting in response to the Czar's appeal may immediately bring forth, the most important point is that the statements of fact contained in the Czar's manifesto are true. They are indeed not new. The same things have often been said before. But those who said them were promptly and derisively cried down as visionary dreamers who had no conception of the responsibilities involved in the management of the great business of the world. Now those things are authoritatively proclaimed by the most absolute monarch commanding the largest army on earth, and holding in his hand the destinies of one of the greatest empires—the man whose immediate responsibilities in the management of the great business of the world are not exceeded by those of any other human being.

While the so-called practical men of the age never cease to tell us that the greatest possible security of peace depends upon the greatest possible preparation for war, that autocrat and commander of millions of soldiers tells them that the nations which are draining their own vitality to preserve peace by their preparations for war are doing a thing which, if prolonged, “will inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which make every thinking man shudder in advance.” Thus it is no longer merely the idle and irresponsible dreamer but the practical potentate charged with the farthest-reaching powers and the highest responsibilities who warns the world that if the policy of increasing armaments, which we call militarism, be persisted in, it must produce ruinous mischief, and end in incalculable disaster and calamity.