8 THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM 



become degraded. Good citizenship, without a high 

 degree of self-respect, is impossible. So these people 

 may become an element of weakness and a menace 

 to our free institutions, if not to our Government it- 

 self. How, if not through our public schools, can this 

 mass, with small conception of our free institutions, 

 become assimilated and Americanized? We cannot 

 reasonably expect the average foreign-born adult ever 

 to have an adequate conception of the genius and 

 spirit of our free institutions. It is only in child- 

 hood that character may be molded and developed. 

 What we make of the young immigrant, after he is 

 here, is vastly more important than what he is when 

 he comes. The most practical way to reach the fa- 

 thers and mothers, ignorant of our language, is 

 through the children. 



No broad-minded citizen would abolish the public 

 schools or minimize education, but thinking men must 

 feel some solicitude as to the character of the education 

 inculcated in these schools. Vicious education in 

 Germany had drenched the world with blood. That 

 malignant strength was waning and peace seemed 

 near, when Russian ignorance, in its weakness, robbed 

 us of a powerful ally. Should an unsatisfactory peace 

 come, who shall say which of the two factors mal- 

 education of the German masses, or ignorance of the 

 Russian peasantry was the one that shifted the 

 wavering scale of justice to the baleful side? Lack- 

 ing either of these, the Central Powers must have 

 failed ere this. 



To the masses, and especially to our foreign born, 

 liberty is a vague term, " meaning many things to 



