Also I can tell how, during the war, seven high schools took part in a debate: “Resolved, that the nations of the world should adopt the program of the League to Enforce Peace.” You can look back now and see that it was our going into the war blindfolded, our utter failure to know anything about the issues of the peace, that made the great tragedy of Europe. Do not get this League to Enforce Peace confused with pacifist organizations like the Peoples’ Council; this was a perfectly respectable organization, with ex-President Taft as president! But Mr. Jack Bean, a member of the school board, rushed to the “Times” with the charge that the high schools of Los Angeles were carrying on propaganda for immediate peace! The “Times” took it up, and for three days published scare articles accusing two students, Lee Payne and Mildred Ogden, of being pro-German. Young Payne assures me that their only mention of Germany in the entire debate was to quote President Taft’s statement that if the program of the League to Enforce Peace had been in action in 1914, Germany would not have dared to begin the war. But the solemn asses on the board passed a resolution, solemnly forbidding the debating of peace; and the “Times” solemnly printed their resolution under the caption: “Win the War!” How far the Black Hand is willing to go in this program of cutting out the brains of the school children you may judge by the fact that in 1921 Assemblyman Greene introduced, and the Better America Federation tried to jam through the state legislature, an act providing for the expulsion from the schools of “any teacher who shall disparage to a pupil in the school where said teacher is employed, any provision of the Constitution of the United States of America, or who shall orally make to such pupil any argument or give to such pupil any written or printed argument in favor of making any change in any provision of said Constitution.” And this, you understand, in face of the fact that the Constitution itself provides for its amendment, and has been quite legally and constitutionally amended no less than nineteen times in our history! Think of a school teacher being forbidden by law to discuss with a pupil the desirability of an amendment prohibiting child labor!