Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/557

 favoring conquest and annexation. Voting for Roosevelt, Schurz wrote to a friend, is practically nominating him for the Presidency, and his accession to the higher office will be ruinous to the country. Senator George F. Hoar, whose dread of expansion led him to appeal to Schurz for aid in resisting it, sought at the same time to calm the latter's fears about Roosevelt. “I do not think,” Hoar wrote, “there is the slightest possibility that he will ever be nominated for the Presidency, and if he were nominated and elected I think that all questions of imperialism would have got settled long before he would have a chance to influence them for good or evil.”

In the light of the future Schurz figured as at least the equal of Hoar in accuracy of political prediction. The two men were too far apart in their views as to the importance of party ties to get anything like the same angle of observation on any question of policy. Schurz wrote to Hoar: “You are a strong party man, which I am not, and what I am now going to say may possibly shock you. I believe that the only thing that can save the Republic from being rushed over the precipice is the defeat in the coming election of all or nearly all the Republican candidates, either for State offices or for Congress, who have conspicuously come out in favor of that expansion policy.” Schurz's confidence that imperialism could be killed by Republican defeat proved as ill-founded as Hoar's belief that Republican victory would kill it. The two men counseled together earnestly but in vain, while the ratification of the treaty of peace was pending in the Senate. The great difficulty was to find a positive programme for maintaining order in the Philippines without taking armed possession of them. Hoar adopted Schurz's suggestion that the matter should be arranged by a conference of the great powers, looking to a