In this connection I should say a word about adult education. Those engaged in this branch of instruction are loud in their criticism of the propaganda which passes for education in school and college. Many of them have turned to adult education in order to spread some propaganda of their own. Teachers in this field are constantly tempted to yield to the prejudices of their students in order to gain popularity and keep up attendance. Each type of institution or special group has its peculiar prejudices and will insist that the instruction given in its classes be so presented as to lend support to its interests and beliefs. Where churches maintain classes, adult education will tend to take on a certain color. It will assume another in the trade union, still another when the appeal is to radicals. We have already seen that a school of adult education may be in fact a socialist theological seminary. Many others merely provide continued employment for people who had been professional Americanization propagandists in the hectic years that followed the war. A favorite method among propagandists is distortion of fact. It is difficult for anyone who takes an intensely partisan view of a situation to be honest with himself or careful about matters of fact. Respect for the truth is, I think, an acquired taste. And the propagandist is a special pleader. There is always the tendency to load the dice, to over-emphasize anything that lends support and to gloss over and explain away any fact that might weaken the case. Rumor, allegation, mere surmise, will, if it happens to be useful, to put out as fact established beyond the possibility of doubt. An excellent example of this practice is a statement recently issued by a committee of one of the large Protestant denominations attacking both the Governor of the State and the Mayor of New York. On the occasion of the latter’s visit to the South I quote a sentence or two. “The South will be interested to know Mr. Walker’s connection with New York’s odorous prize-fighting game and with those elements in New York which are doing their best to murder American standards of morality.... Let it remember the propaganda which is systematically organized to incite to crime in the South and West in order that the prohibition law may be overthrown by these criminal activities.... Let it remember that Governor Smith and his friends were the first political group in America to introduce a religious issue into a convention of a political party, an atrocious thing to do in a country where all religions stand on the same basis.” Note how the impression is given that the Mayor’s alleged sympathy with those who wish to repeal the Volstead Act is a connection with propaganda systematically organized to incite to crime and undermine American morals. The reference to Governor Smith is typical of much propaganda.