The State collects no revenue save poll tax from ninety percent of its illiterate citizens. Uncle Sam has overlooked an important source of revenue which if streaming into his coffers from five million pockets would soon pay his enormous war debt. If all the illiterates in this country were taught to read and write, even did they average no more than one letter each month, they would pay into the treasury annually, at the present rate of postage, more than a million dollars. The Surgeon General’s report on illiteracy in the American Army showed that out of a million and a half registrants examined, one man out of every four was unable to read and understand a newspaper or to write a letter home. The exact percentage of illiteracy among these men, he stated, was 24.9 percent and ran as high as 49.5 percent in men sent from one of the states. This seems most startling in any light that it may be viewed, but it appears all the more significant when compared with illiteracy in the ranks of our allies--France having only three illiterates out of every hundred in the army and England with only one out of every hundred. Most of all does it stagger us to compare our illiteracy figures with those of our recent enemy--only one out of every five thousand in the German army was unable to read and write. The bravery of illiterate soldiers who served in the late war is unquestioned. In individual cases and single handed where they could employ pioneer methods of warfare they, undoubtedly, did well but when it was a case for concerted action, of obeying orders and of co-operation with the troops, their lack of education told on them most tragically. One lieutenant said during the War, “I have three men in my company who cannot count up to four.” In one of the training camps where foreign-born soldiers were stationed, there were men who did not know the right hand from the left. Consequently, they were drilled, with a piece of rope in one hand a hammer in the other, to the command of “squads rope” and “squads hammer” instead of “squads right” and “squads left.” A woman who was teaching a man of draft age said, “I could teach Ben just anything and it would be something he didn’t know. He didn’t even know how many months there are in a year.” This sort of ignorance in the army in even a small proportion of the men would have constituted a weakness which, in a long drawn out contest, would have told mightily in the final results. There were 1,023,000 soldiers in the American Army who were illiterate according to the statistics branch of the general staff. This was an army within an army. They must have hindered their comrades oftentimes, besides being at a fearful disadvantage always themselves. The seriousness of this situation could not be overestimated. Next to the actual casualties, it was America’s supreme tragedy of the War.