Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/79

Rh ritory of the Republic, and then went forth to bring “liberty” to the world outside. Thus they won victory and glory and conquest. And then, having gone forth to fight for liberty, they proceeded, intoxicated with glory and conquest, to turn their victories for liberty to the advantage of a personal government animated with insatiable despotic ambitions. I am far from saying that the spirit of the army was the only cause for the downfall of the democratic Republic. But it is a matter of history that the army, which had been created for the service of democracy, was, by the glory and the conquests it achieved, transformed into a willing and most effective instrument of usurpation and tyranny at home and of oppression abroad. And it may be said that the Napoleonic system of government which was thus created was the beginning of that militarism with which Europe is now afflicted.

The second French Republic sprang from the revolution of 1848. It was the prestige of the name of Napoleon, the glamour of the Napoleonic legend of military glory, that made the election of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the Republic possible. Usurpation followed. I do not pretend that the spirit of the standing army alone caused the transformation of the second French Republic into the second French Empire. But it can certainly not be denied that the army again lent itself as a willing tool to the schemes of the conspirators who had planned the destruction of the Republic, and the erection of a monarchical government upon its ruins.

After the disastrous collapse of imperial rule in the Franco-German war, the third French Republic was proclaimed in 1870. It has now lasted well-nigh twenty-nine years. But the greatest dangers that have threatened its existence came from the position in it of the standing army. One of its chiefs, MacMahon, while