diers and sailors commit us to
instruct and nationalize their brothers in breed.

"The spirit in which these United States were conceived insists that the
Republic remove the cruel disadvantage under which so many native borns
despairingly carry on.

"How may they reason soundly or plan sagely? The man who knows nothing
of the past can find little in the future. The less he has gleaned from
human experience the more he may be expected to duplicate its signal
errors. No argument is too ridiculous for acceptance; no sophistry can
seem far-fetched to a person without the sense to confound it.

"Anarchy shall never want for mobs while the uninformed are left at the
mercy of false prophets. Those who have no way to estimate the worth of
America are unlikely to value its institutions fairly. Blind to facts,
the wildest one-eyed argument can sway them.

"Not until we can teach our illiterate millions the truths about the
land to which they have come and in which they were born shall its
spirit reach them--not until they can read can we set them right and
empower them to inherit their estate.

"If we continue to neglect them, there are influences at work that will
sooner or later convince them who now fail to appreciate the worth of
our Government that the Government itself has failed--crowd the melting
pot with class hates and violence and befoul its yield.

"We must not be tried by inquest. We demand the right to vindicate the
merit of our systems wherever their integrity is questioned or maligned.

"We demand the right to regulate the cheating scales upon which the
Republic is weighed by its ill-wishers.

"We demand the right to protect unintelligence from Esau bargains with
hucksters of traitorous creeds.

"We demand the right to present our case and our cause to the unlettered
mass, whose benightedness and ready prejudices continually invite
exploitation.

"We demand the right to vaccinate credulous inexperience against
Bolshevism and kindred plagues.

"We demand the right to render all whose kind we deem fit to fight for
our flag fit to vote and prosper under its folds.

"We demand the right to bring the American language to every American,
to qualify each inhabitant of these United States for self-determination,
self-uplift, and self-defense."

Dr. Philander P. Claxton, Commissioner of Education, in his analysis of
the illiteracy figures of the census, said:

"Illiteracy is not confined to any one race o