Source: Missouri Senator
Carl Schurz Questions American Military Expansion
No candid observer of current events will deny that even to-day the spirit of
the new policy awakened by the victories and conquests achieved in the Spanish
war, and by the occurrences in the Philippines, has moved even otherwise
sober-minded persons to speak of the Constitutional limitations of governmental
power with a levity which a year ago would have provoked serious alarm and
stern rebuke. We are loudly told by the advocates of the new policy that the
Constitution no longer fits our present conditions and aspirations as a great
and active world Power, and should not be permitted to stand in our way. . . .
Such usurpations [of constitutional authority] are most apt to be acquiesced in
when, in time of war, they appeal to popular feeling in the name of military
necessity, or of the honor of the flag, or of National glory. In a democracy
acting through universal suffrage . . . every influence is unhealthy that
prevents men from calm reasoning. And nothing is more calculated to do that
than martial excitements which stir the blood. . . .
History shows that military glory is the most unwholesome food that democracies
can feed upon. War withdraws, more than anything else, the popular attention
from those problems and interests which are, in the long run, of the greatest
consequence. It produces a strange moral and political color-blindness. It
creates false ideals of patriotism and civic virtue. . . .