What America Means to Me: A Book of the People, by the People, for the People; Designed for Their Use in Preparing Themselves for the Practice of Citizenship (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from What America Means to Me: A Book of the People, by the People, for the People; Designed for Their Use in Preparing Themselves for the Practice of Citizenship

IS it not a venturesome experiment for a nation to admit to the difficult privilege Of being a citizen in a democracy such a multitude Of recruits with no Special training for their task? Is it not an astonishing fact that for generations we have fought so strenuously for the franchise, but have done SO little to prepare ourselves for its exercise?

It sometimes requires a surgical operation to awaken a nation to a realization of its Obvious needs. Such an Operation was performed for us by the recent World War. It helped us realize what it means to our national welfare, that among candidates for citizenship there is so large a number Of resident and unprepared aliens, that the military draft revealed an appalling number of illiterates among the native-born, that less than half the citizens Of America have had even a grammar school education.

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