Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/98

74 of battle, and pale into insignificance by the side of any act of bravery done in killing enemies in the field. I speak also of that moral courage more important in a democracy, which defies the popular outcry in maintaining what it believes right, and in opposing what it thinks wrong.

Blood spilled for it on the battlefield is often taken to sanctify and to entitle to popular support any cause, however questionable. It is called treason to denounce such a cause, be it ever so bad. It is called patriotism to support it, however strongly conscience may revolt against it. Take for instance the man who honestly believes our war against the Filipinos to be unjust. If that man, faithfully obeying the voice of his conscience, frankly denounces that war, and thereby risks the public station he may occupy, or the friendship of his neighbors, and resolutely meets the clamor vilifying him as a craven recreant and an enemy to the Republic, he is, morally, surely no less a hero than the soldier who at the word of command and in the excitement of battle rushes against a hostile battery. You can no doubt find in our country an abundance of men who would stand bravely under a hailstorm of bullets. But many of them, if their consciences condemned the Filipino war ever so severely, would be loath to face the charge of want of patriotism assailing everybody who opposes it. This is no new story. War makes military heroes, but it makes also civic cowards. No wonder that war has always proved so dangerous to the vitality of democracies; for a democracy needs to keep alive above all things the civic virtues, which war so easily demoralizes.

You will have observed that I have treated the matter of militarism in the United States in intimate connection with our warlike enterprises, as if they were substantially the same thing. I have done so purposely. As I endeavored to set forth, the development of militarism in Euro-