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At least nine-tenths of all the sincere reformers supported me; but the ultra-pacifists, the so-called anti-imperialists, or anti-militarists, or peace-at-any-price men, preferred Croker to me; and another knot of extremists who had at first ardently insisted that I must be "forced" on Platt, as soon as Platt supported me themselves opposed me because he supported me.
It was opposed on a strange variety of grounds; some arguing that the proposed fortifications were superfluous, because our navy was the defence to which the nation was wont deservedly to trust; some that they were needless, because no other nation was in a condition to attack us; others that they were disgraceful, because it was un-English and mean to skulk behind stone walls, and because Lycurgus had refused to trust to stone walls for the safety of Sparta; and one member, the chief spokesman of a new and small party, commonly known as the "peace-at-any-price party," boldly denounced the members of the commission as a set of "lunatics" for framing such a report, and the ministers as guilty of "contemptible cowardice" for suggesting to the nation that there was any danger in being undefended.
They will not yield on that point, and they will regard our protests as really inspired by German influence thus far at least: that the German propaganda has organized and encouraged the commercial objection in the United States, and that this propaganda and the peace-at-any-price sentiment demand a stiff controversy with England to offset the stiff controversy with Germany; and, after all, they ask, what does a stiff controversy with the United States amount to?
Nobody at all, except perhaps a few people who may be called to account, and a handful of greedy profit-seekers, wants to keep it going. Quietly perhaps and unobtrusively, everyone I know is now trying to find the way out of the war, and I am convinced that the same is the case in Germany. That is what makes the Peace-at-any-price campaign so exasperating.
The peace-at-any-price party was struggling hard for the ascendancy, and the Spanish partizans were doing their best to hold up to suspicion the sharp practice of the English Queen. She was even accused of underhand dealing with Spain, to the disadvantage of the Provinces; so much had slander, anarchy, and despair, been able to effect.
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