Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/549

 to check the grim trend toward war. He joined heartily in the movement for a treaty of arbitration with Great Britain, and wrote and spoke at every opportunity on behalf of this project. The danger of hostilities with Great Britain passed away, but the spirit which the crisis had so clearly revealed remained active and unappeased. A craving for war and territorial expansion, as the conclusive demonstrations of self-conscious national power, was shown by many signs to have firm possession of the popular mind. In the spring of 1898 the Cuban situation furnished sufficient occasion, and war with Spain ensued.

The events that led to intervention in Cuba were followed by Mr. Schurz with positive mental distress. From personal experience he could clearly foresee the sufferings that war would entail; he despised the agitators, journalistic and political, who were most conspicuous in inflaming the popular mind against Spain; and most of all he feared the effects of success upon the future of our institutions. As the crisis approached in April, he labored strenuously to avert the disaster. So long as he wrote for Harper's Weekly his editorials were insistent on peace. For the New York Chamber of Commerce he drafted the resolutions that it adopted on April 7, declaring that “war with its incalculable horrors and miseries, when brought about without peremptory necessity, is not only a calamity but a crime.” In a short speech supporting these resolutions he pictured the frightful scenes he had witnessed among the wounded at Gettysburg, and declared that while he was not for peace at any price, he was equally opposed to the idea of war at any price. He used all of his never great influence with the President to stiffen Mr. McKinley's sincere but ineffective preference for peace. On April 1st he wrote to the President: “The conservative and unselfishly patriotic