MR. SCHURZ AND MILITARISM.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
In your last Sunday number you say of
my address on “Militarism and Democracy,” recently delivered before the American Academy of Political and Social Science:
“We confess that we cannot share the
apprehensions that the Hon. Carl Schurz, with perfect sincerity and great seriousness, entertains as to the possible advent of militarism in the United States and the evils that would accompany it.”
And then you quote the following
sentence from my address:
“A large part of the Revolutionary Army, ‘turned by six years of war from militia into seasoned veterans,’ and full of that overbearing esprit de corps characteristic of standing armies, urged George Washington to make himself a dictator, a monarch; that, as one of his biographers expresses it, ‘It was as easy for Washington to have grasped supreme power then as it would have been for Caesar to have taken the crown from Antony upon the Lupercal’; and that it was only George Washington's patriotic loyalty and magnificent manhood that stamped out the plot.”
If you mean to suggest by this quotation
that I apprehended any military usurpation
of that kind you must have overlooked
that the passage quoted was preceded by
the following sentences:
“I am far from predicting that the
organization, maintenance, and use of large
armaments will speedily bring forth in this
country the same consequences which they
did produce in England in Cromwell's time
and in France at the periods of the first
and the Second French Republics. With us
the ‘man on horseback’ is not in sight. There is no danger of monarchical usurpation by a victorious General — although it is well worthy of remembrance that even here” — and then I mentioned the attempt to seduce Washington's republican virtue. The quotation, “It was as easy for Washington to have grasped supreme power then as it would have been for Caesar to have taken the crown from Antony upon the Lupercal,” is from the “Life of Washington,” by Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge.
But I went on to say: “However, usurpation
of so gross a character would now be
rendered infinitely more difficult, not only
by the republican spirit and habits of the
people, but also by our federative
organization, dividing so large an expanse of
country into a multitude of self-governing
States. But even in such a country, and
among such a people, it is possible to
demoralize the constitutional system and to
infuse a dangerous element of arbitrary
power into the Government without making
it a monarchy in form or name.” And then
I went on to show that recent events had
stimulated among us a spirit of recklessness
as to the disregard of the constitutional
limitations of governmental power
which may indeed become very dangerous
to our democratic institutions.
Had you quoted me a little more fully
your article would not have left upon the
mind of the reader an impression as if I
were troubled by the apprehension that
some successful military or naval
commander might soon make himself King or
Emperor of the United States. But, as I
set forth in my address, I do entertain
apprehensions of a different kind, which I
know to be entertained also by a great
many cool-headed citizens, and which are
not unlikely to be share by yourself.
C. SCHURZ.
New York, April 9, 1899.