I very much doubt whether any respectable number of sensible and reflecting American citizens in our day would challenge the truth that morality is essential to the maintenance of civilized society and government, that the greatest influence for morality is to be found in the churches of the various denominations throughout the country, and that in teaching morality the churches are rendering a patriotic service and promoting the best interests and the highest policy of the state. I venture to assert that the only reasonable difference of opinion possible among candid and just men is as to the best way of inculcating religion in the young and the extent to which religious instruction is essential as a part of the complete education of children. On the one hand, there are those who conscientiously assert and sincerely believe that their children can receive all the religious training they need at home or at Sunday school and that they do not require any religious instruction in the daily schoolroom; on the other hand, there are those who conscientiously assert and sincerely believe that religion is the most essential part of the education of the child and of the forming of its moral character, that few parents have the time or the ability to teach religion to their children, and that religion can properly be taught only by making it part and parcel of the early schoolroom and of every day's instruction and study, while the mind and character of the child are plastic. The latter view is that of Catholics and of constantly increasing numbers of Protestants who send their children to private schools in which the doctrines of their faith are taught. In the Catholic view, the influence of the school upon the future manhood and womanhood and citizenship of the country cannot be over-estimated. The school is the nursery where the mind and heart of the impressionable child are moulded into enduring form; the subtle influence of daily religious surroundings, including example and suggestion in the classroom, is as strong and pervading as it is difficult to analyze; the lessons of the primary and elementary school are those that endure and in time dominate the child's mind; and the visible examples of daily discipline, uniformity of ideals, obedience, self-control and disinterested devotedness to Church and country, indeed the very atmosphere of the Catholic religious school, are of themselves formative and educative elements. It is the classroom that is the training field of character and good citizenship--of true manhood and womanhood. Yet many would wholly exclude and banish its most important and essential feature!