THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
ness of his democratic friends. However unjust such a reproach, it touched Kinkel deeply. He was in this state of mind when a scheme was proposed to him, characteristic of the feverish imagination of the political exiles. The scheme was to raise a “German National Loan,” of I do not remember how many million thalers, to be redeemed at a certain time after the establishment of the German Republic. The money thus raised was to be at the disposal of a central committee to be expended in Germany for revolutionary ends. To expedite the levying of that national loan Kinkel was to go to America without delay, and by means of public agitation, in which his personal popularity and eminent oratorical gifts were expected to prove highly effective, induce the Germans living in America, and also, if possible, native Americans, too, to make liberal contributions. In the meantime some of his friends were, through personal efforts, to win the assent of other prominent refugees to this plan, and thus, if possible, to unite all refugeedom in one organization. But Kinkel was to leave for America forthwith without exposing the project to the chance of further consultation, so that the refugees, who otherwise might have doubted or criticised the plan, would have to deal with it as an accomplished fact.
In later years it must have appeared to Kinkel himself as rather strange, if not comical, that he could ever have believed in the success of such a plan. At any rate this project was one of the most striking illustrations of the self-deception of the political exiles. But there can hardly be any doubt that the reproaches directed against Kinkel, as to his giving more care to the well-being of his family than to the revolutionary cause, and as to his owing a debt of gratitude to one of his friends in further efforts for the revolutionary movement, was to him one of the principal motives for accepting this plan without hesita-
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