And once the cult phrases are thoroughly learned it is very difficult for an individual to learn anything more. This is why the teaching of any subject should never be permitted to take on a set form, for cult ideas reduce an issue or situation to a statement so simple that it is a mere caricature. Subjects that require exhaustive analysis and deep meditation or much more information than anyone possesses are settled with amazing finality by oracular-minded people. How many matters of vital importance are met with such phrases as “One hundred percent American,” “My country right or wrong,” “Every Bolshevik should be stood up against a wall and shot,” “Plenty of room at the top,” “Reward of Merit,” “Progressive,” “Reactionary,” “The cure for democracy is more democracy,” “Let the people rule,” “Down with capitalist exploitation,” “Labor produces all wealth,” “The demon rum,” “Godless evolution.” The habit which politicians, professional reformers and other propagandists have of appealing to popular prejudice in order to gain adherents is a well-known phenomenon of social psychology. Every political campaign is an orgy of this sort of thing. Mayor Hylan of New York, when his incompetence was exposed, diverted attention by denouncing the “interests.” In the same city a few years ago those who were opposed to modernizing the public school system stirred up a large section of the population with the assertion that the “Gary School” was a Steel Trust school. During the war men were elected to office not because of their record but according to how strenuously they professed their Americanism and denounced alleged pro-Germans and socialists. A “friend of the people” attacks Wall Street as a matter of course. Any man who questions the wisdom of the prohibition laws is immediately said to be in league with the “liquor interests.” In prohibition propaganda effective use was made of the fact that many brewers were of German descent. In the South the Ku Klux Klan is mainly anti-Negro, in the Middle West it is anti-Catholic. In the East it takes on an anti-Semitic coloring. It is by such appeals that multitudes are marshalled and led first in one direction and then in another, always to the temporary advantage of a group of leaders. Into all this an ulterior purpose, a quite personal interest is often insinuated. During the war I made a collection of advertisements in which all sorts of articles were urged upon the purchaser with the statement that in buying such goods the public was helping win the war. It is obvious that whenever a crowd movement is created its propaganda has a marked illiberal influence upon institutions of learning. During the war public education in this country suffered seriously. A spirit of intolerance often wholly irrelevant to the winning of the war took possession of many educators. Eminent scientists lost their heads and ceased to behave with that good judgment which people expect of a scholar in a critical situation.