EIR senior editor Jeffrey Steinberg read the following message to the 30th Anniversary conference of the Schiller Institute, from Brigadier General John Johns (ret.).

In introduction, Steinberg said:

“He’s been an outspoken critic of all the recent wars. He and General Robert Garde wrote a major piece in the New York Times several years back when it looked like we were about to go to war with Iran, and just simply said, do not do it.

“General Johns sent a paper, a lecture that he gave down in Virginia, and he asked that I just read a very brief quote from it, which is very much in line with the Schiller Institute’s tradition and spirit, and also with the presentations you’ve heard today. It’s actually from a former U.S. Senator named Carl Schurz, who was the first German-born American citizen later, to be elected to the United States Senate. He was a general in the Union army during the Civil War; later in the Senate; later he was the Interior Secretary; and at the time of the Spanish-American War, he delivered the following brief statement:

“The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism, or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to lovingly and faithfully serving his country, at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one, than those who, with the ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if they let others do the fighting.”