- eigners coming to settle in this country. They, longer than
any other people, retain their own institutions, their own language, their own customs. In parts of the country there are schools which teach the German language more than they do the English—a practice which, in all likelihood, will be discontinued when the troops come back from France and Germany. Without any doubt or question, pro-German school teachers were German propagandists, usually of the indiscreet and hotheaded sort.
From Terre Haute, Indiana, comes a complaint regarding Miss Lena Neubern—that is what we will call her—a hot socialist and worse, who was a school teacher. Miss Neubern had two brothers in that city who refused to allow an American flag to be placed in front of their store, or to allow their clerks to attend the parade of the Third Liberty Loan. A committee of citizens called on them and told them "in strong term what was expected of them." Miss Neubern taught her school children, Americans, that the "Kaiser was just as good a man as President Wilson; that the United States was in this war, not for democracy, but for commercial supremacy; that the United States was as greedy as Germany; that we were controlled by England, always the enemy of the United States." Miss Neubern refused to allow the Star Spangled Banner to be sung in her room, and did all she could to hinder the sale of Thrift Stamps among the children, though in other schools large numbers of stamps had been sold. This active and intelligent young woman pleaded guilty of this charge and was dismissed by the school board. One wonders whether the German Government would have stopped at the dismissal in a similar instance!
Another form of German propagandist might have been found higher up in educational circles. The faculties of our great universities have always been made up in part of a class of men who are of the belief that intellect and scholarship are best shown by eccentricity and radicalism. More than that, we had a number of actual Germans in our university faculties in America. Since it is the proposition here to deal in concrete facts and not in mere general assertions, let us print something which came in, embodied in the report from Champaign, Illinois.
