ILLITERACY.

If the war has revealed many virtues in the American people it has also brought to light one of the most sinister vices that can affliot a civilized community. The army reports from the different draft camps reveal an alarming percentage of illiteracy among the draftees, not only with men of foreign birth but also among the native born Americans. New estimates represent, the number of illiterates in the country as being far above the census reports of the last decade.

For several decades we have plodded placidly along, pointing aimiably to our superior education that teaches the young, the old, the rich, the poor alike and reduces ignorance in the lower classes to a smaller proportion than in any European country. Now the veil is rent and we see a hideous condition of things; and at the same time there appears the root of a number of evils.

Ignorance and illiteracy are the greatest possible obstacles to a free democratic government, a spirit of patriotism and Americanism. It is difficult to expect a man who cannot write his own name, whose whole life is bound up in six days of manual labor and a pay roll at the end, to appreciate the advantages of our particular constitution. Why should he not join the I. W. W., the Bolsheviki or any other organization that promises him more personal advantages, more money, more power. The agents of destruction are amply provided with arguments for his consumption.

We cannot ignore the condition that fosters such a type any longer. Illiteracy is the first problem that our reorganized educational system must undertake to solve.