searchlight of
wisdom, for whenever you educate the followers of Catholicism they
become disgusted with their dogmas of damnation.

Our public schools are the bulwarks of this government, and all that
we are to-day, and all that we may expect to be in the future, has
come and must come by and through the public schools, which are the
dearest institutions that adorn this country.

There must be no sectarianism, whether political or religious, in our
public schools, but there must be truth and duty there. The
unchanging and undying maxim of moral rectitude should be taught to
every child. It is not enough that a boy or girl should be educated
mentally. The safety of our nation, as well as his own usefulness and
happiness, demand that they should be trained to habits of
truthfulness and develop a fine standard of honor. They should be
inspired to form exalted ideals of manhood and womanhood, charity,
rectitude and godliness, and made strong in the resolution to defend
the truth, which is never found in parochial schools, as the Catholic
doctrine always tends to humiliate her followers.

The time has come when the pupils of our public schools must be
taught the love of country, and Catholicism does not teach this, but
the reverse. The children of this nation must learn to love their
native land. To whom shall we look for the inculcation of those
patriotic sentiments which should inspire the heart of every American
citizen? Not to Catholicism, by any means, but to the three hundred
thousand teachers of our public schools.

Over every school house in hamlet and city, in country and town, in
the North and in the South, in the East and in the West, the American
flag should kiss the morning breeze. Place it where twenty millions
of children will see it every day, and learn to love it as the emblem
of all that is great and good. It will represent to us and to all the
world, in a new and peculiar manner, the great fundamental truth that
the bulwark of our liberties is in the education of our people.

The war of the revolution was fought to establish our nationality.
Incalculable blood and treasure have been spent to establish and keep
our national life intact, and the national policy with relation to
our public schools is part and parcel of that all-absorbing
determination to secure the perpetuity of the state. Men make better
citizens for being educated. The higher the popular intellect is
raised the more intelligent and in