Even in the service of a good cause, propaganda makes for superficiality in both him who gives and him who receives it. The convert has seen the light. He is on the right side. He need have no more doubts or hesitation. Curiosity and further speculation are no longer necessary. Reasoning henceforth can become special pleading--mere rationalization, an array of clever plausibilities designed to strengthen the faith and protect the devotee against the danger that he may change his mind. He now becomes a propagandist himself, a lay preacher as it were, whose mission in life is to convert and uplift others. He begins to harp on one string. In his eagerness to convince he resorts to the obvious, the thing said for effect. He is more concerned with the force of his arguments than with the accuracy of his statements. He is so busy with the general good that he neglects to purify himself. With unwashed hands he breaks his bread and serves it to his neighbors. I have seldom seen a person who has spent years making converts, who has not lost in intellectual integrity. Emerson noted this trait in the abolitionists of his day. It is a quality which world menders of all types have in common. Sooner or later the passion to convert, like any other passion over-indulged, warps the whole personality. The propagandist becomes intemperate. He loses something in delicacy and sense of humor. There is in his manner a mixture of emotion and coercion and a kind of slyness. Finally from much repetition of stock phrases the great cause itself becomes hackneyed and professionalized. Most of the messages which men would carry to the masses slip through the propagandists’ fingers and dribble out before they arrive at their destination. I have tried to make clear the differences between propaganda and education. If I am correct, it follows that whenever the educator becomes a propagandist he gives up his proper function. I do not mean that a school teacher should not advocate political change or any other reform he chooses. He is a citizen as well as a teacher, and has the right to express his convictions, however unpopular they may be. But it is not as a teacher that he does so. Ordinarily the public insists that there are certain views that he may not express either in or outside his class-room. At the same time he is required to be the advocate of popular moral, religious and political prejudices, however erroneous he knows them to be. Public education suffers much from this lack of freedom, for it operates to keep independent minds out of the teaching profession. Unless any subject may be presented and every relevant fact discussed without fear or favor, the instruction offered students is a cheat.