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.
Illiterates are nowhere at a greater disadvantage than at the ballot box, where corrupt men often purchase their birthright for a mess of pottage or cheat them out of it entirely. Henry Van Dyke says, “To place the ballot in the hands of illiterate persons is like hanging a diamond around the neck of a little child and sending it out into the crowded street.” The ballot has not only been placed in the hands of 2,273,603 illiterate male voters but since the enfranchisement of women, the number of illiterate voters in America has been augmented by, perhaps, two millions more. With over four million voters who cannot read their ballots, is the body politic sound, healthy, or even safe?
In a republic, society rests upon the intelligence of the people and only in universal education is democracy safe and liberty securely enthroned. A nation which has over four million illiterate voters is not strongly fortified to uphold any principle, and society is undermined and weakened at its very source. Since universal education is so essential to the success of a democracy it is a wonder that a provision was not written into the Constitution of the United States similar to the one once proposed by Cortez for the constitution of Spain, “That no person born after this day shall acquire the right of citizenship until he can read and write.” Thomas Jefferson said of this, “It is impossible to sufficiently estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all that have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of government and progressive advancement of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual. Enlighten the people generally and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
Nearly a hundred years later President Grant in his recommendations to Congress wrote as follows, “The compulsory support of free schools and the disfranchisement of all who cannot read and write the English language, after a fixed probation, would meet with my hearty approval.” Had this recommendation been carried out and its execution accompanied with the opportunity for every man and woman, as well as every child, to learn to read and write, there would be no army of illiterate voters in this country marching to the polls on election day.
Illiterates, even though blind to books and helpless to ameliorate their own condition, are not without certain power to weaken, harass and damage a nation. Pancho Villa, the illiterate Mexican outlaw, disturbed the peace of two nations. During the period of unrest following the War our Government faced a critical situation. While we struggled with bomb plots on the east coast and with strife and disturbance on the west, the danger from anarchist, Bolshevist and anti-American sources was greater than the general public ever knew. The poison spread by them could be neutralized among the educated classes through government bulletins and newspapers and magazine articles but was not so easily counteracted among the illiterate masses. Here walking delegates found fertile soil for their pernicious doctrines. Not only in time of war or in reconstruction but at all times are the illiterate masses easily influenced and misled.
There is a poor blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength and bound with bands of steel,