.

Our government profiting by the long weary struggles of other countries,
is founded upon the absolute separation of church and state. This does
not mean the separation of religion in its true sense from the state;
but keeping it free from every type of sectarian influence and
domination. It is ours to see that no silent subtle influences are at
work, that will eventually make the same trouble here as in other
countries, or that will thrust out the same stifling hand to undermine
and to throttle universal free public education, and the inalienable
right that every child has to it. Our children are the wards of and
accountable to the state--they are not the property of any organization,
group or groups, less than the state.

We need the creation of a strong Federal Department of Education of
cabinet rank, with ample means and strong powers to be the guiding
genius of all our state and local departments of education, with greater
attention paid to a more thorough and concrete training in civics, in
moral and ethical education, in addition to the other well recognized
branches in public school education. It should have such powers also as
will enable it to see that every child is in school up to a certain age,
or until all the fundamentals of a prescribed standard of American
education are acquired.

A recent tabulation made public by a Federal Deputy Commissioner of
Naturalization has shown that a little over one tenth, in round numbers,
11,000,000, of our population is composed of unnaturalized aliens. Even
this however tells but a part of the story; for vast numbers of even
those who have become naturalized, have in no sense become Americanized.

Speaking of this class an able editorial in a recent number of one of
our leading New York dailies has said:

"Of the millions of aliens who have gone through the legal forms of
naturalization a very large proportion have not in any sense been
Americanized, and, though citizens, they are still alien in habits of
thought, in speech and in their general attitude toward the community.

"There are industrial centres not far from New York City that are wholly
foreign. There are sections of this city that--except as the children
through the schools and association with others of their own age yield
to change--are intensely alien.

"To penetrate these barriers and open new avenues of communication with
the people who live within them is no longer a task to be performed by
in