Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/411

Indeed, I have such faith in the original goodness of his impulses that I deem him capable of abandoning again any of the wrong ways he has lately taken, except one. And there something stands in the way for which he is not responsible: his temperament, which is altogether too strong for his reason. He is a born fighter in the extremest sense. Nobody ever delighted in the joy of the conflict more heartily than he—not only the conflict of mind against mind, but also—and perhaps even more—the conflict of physical force against physical force. Nobody has ever been more earnest and eloquent than he in extolling the glories, the enthusiasm and the morally elevating influences of war. His demand for “strenuosity” was never quite satisfied with the peaceable achievements by the American people in transforming this vast continent from a wilderness into an abode of civilization. Neither would a strenuous but peaceable application of the mental, moral and physical forces of the American people to the solution of their home problems quite content him. No, in the background of his strenuous dreams there lurk always great conflicts somewhere, conflicts of great armies and navies, in which we are to take part and for which we must be prepared. He apprehends that “if we ever grow to regard peace as a permanent condition” the “keen, fearless, virile qualities of heart, mind and body will sink into disuse.” His constant tongue-lashings of the “coward,” the “craven” and the “weakling,” that is, persons who would not fight unless it was quite necessary, had a somewhat boyish sound, but came from his heart. He dropped them only when by too frequent iteration they had fallen into ridicule. Most characteristic was the utterance which as Assistant Secretary of the Navy he addressed to the Naval War College in which he said: “No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war”; and, “Scant atten-