THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
rights and liberties demanded, force would take the place of mere petition. Of course the regeneration of the fatherland must, if possible, be accomplished by peaceable means. A few days after the outbreak of this commotion I reached my nineteenth birthday. I remember to have been so entirely absorbed by what was happening that I could hardly turn my thoughts to anything else. Like many of my friends, I was dominated by the feeling that at last the great opportunity had arrived for giving to the German people the liberty which was their birthright and to the German fatherland its unity and greatness, and that it was now the first duty of every German to do and to sacrifice everything for this sacred object. We were profoundly, solemnly in earnest.
The first practical service we had to perform turned out to be a very merry one. Shortly after the arrival of the tidings from France the burgomaster of Bonn, a somewhat timid man, believed the public safety in his town to be in imminent danger. In point of fact, in spite of the general excitement there were really no serious disturbances of the public order. But the burgomaster insisted that a civic guard must at once be organized, to patrol the city and the surrounding country during the night. The students, too, were called upon to join it, and as this forming of such a guard was also part of our political programme, we at once willingly obeyed the summons, and we did this in such numbers that soon the civic guard consisted in great part of university men. Our prescribed task was to arrest disturbers of the public order and suspicious individuals, and to conduct them to the guardhouse; to induce gatherings of a suspicious nature to disperse; to protect property and generally to watch over the public safety. But the public safety being really in no manner threatened, and the patrolling of the city and neighborhood meeting no serious need, the uni-
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