Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1920-10-19


not ceased until we have made of him rot only :.
hrSt-class soldier but high-sprited weil-edu-
Gated American citizen"
All this is encouraging; every thinking man
Knows that one of the most serious questions in
our national life is ilteracy in its various forms
ana with It's various ramfcations. When the
characterization bill before the last session of
congress it was shown that twenty-four and ni!.e-
eleFenths per cent of our soldiers could not read
write or speak the English language. 1t was
further stated that there over 100000 people
in this country over ten years of age who can
neither read, write nor speak the English language
and that at least 80 per cent of them are native
born. This is a good many people, Senator Ken
yon helped realize this army of illiterates
by saying day:
Mr.. President, if the ieraes and the foreign
born who can not speak our language should be
reviewed from a stand in front of the White
House, marching by two abreast, and marching -
miles day. it would take two months of solid
marching for them to pass the reviewing stand"
This fact is particularly important just now
because as someone has said:
"Dscontent is mumbling and violence is ranting
all sides. America is trial before 10000
soap boxes; chaos is everywhere seeking recruits
from the ranks of misunderstanding and illiteracv
Iteracy is picl-and-shovel estate life sentence
to mentality. Democracy may not have fixed
classes and survive An outbreak of hoof-and-
mouth disease would compel instant remedial laws
1t is even more incumbent upon us to defend
healthy citizenship against civic incapables If 4
hundred million of stand together we must
think together and that without foreign accent"
Former Secretary of the Interior Franklin X
Lane put the thing in a nutshell when he said:
IN uniformed democracy is not a democracy"
This uniformed democracy is to be pited The
thousands of misguided men today in America
are in a sense to be pited. AS Senator KENYON
said:
They do not know the purposes of America
for they have had opportunity to learn They
do not know that this is in fact the land of the
poor boy; that men have given their lives that
the doors of opportunity might ever be omen to
the children of tomorrow that the opportunities
for their children are the best of any nation on
earth. Our country is TO blame because the chance
has not been presented for them to know Many
of them are eager TO know America for them.
selves and for their children If they cannot
read or speak understand the American lam
'guage. how can they know the wonderful stories
of opportunity in this country? How can they
understand the heights to which their children
may attain in this land of freedom?"
Boys of foreign birth have gone out TO fight for
the nation just Loyalty as those who were
born in this country. The long rolls of honor of
those who have been left the fields of France
contain the names of nearly every nationality on
earth. There IS good material here for American
izaton. The melting Pot cannot boil unless there
is fuel under III, ana tnat 1uel is education"
So what the United States army is doing is lust
SO much fuel under the melting pot.
Take trip down TO Camp Grant, for instance
where few years ago the national army was in
the process of hasty manufacture. Here recently
were to be found general staff officers by the doz-
en- Major General Crowder was there So was
Secretary of War Baker.
The latter on hand to address sort of
normal school graduating class, which for one
month had been meeting TO prepare for the work
of educating the soldier. There were over 1000
of them. women as we'll as men.
This fall they will be distributed among our
army camps, and the modern regular will go TO
school, EnStments are for either one or :hree
, years Each u months officials expect to turn
back into civil life 100000 militarily and vocation
ally educated men.