Excerpt from The Idaho Freemason, Vol. 1: August, 1922

American politics teems with it. Senators and Congressmen are adepts, and from thence down to the little precinct committeeman each hides his real ambi tions or political aims under a specious cloak of lofty ideals.

N or are the ethical subdivisions of our political economy exempt from the use of camouflage, the favorite method being the use of offensive terms to hide an impossible defense.

Of course it is very wrong, and morally indefensible, to say a word derogatory of any man's ethical or religious belief. It isn't done. But to attack a purely political subdivision of a religious propaganda, which in many cases is not only expedient, but patriotic, brings forth immediately the camouflaged cry of big otry. No man in his senses cares or worries about how many of some certain denomination or creed there are in the United States, but every man in his senses does worry about any interference in the constitutional prerogatives of the American citizen - religious freedom, equality before the law, and the right to a free common school education.

To remonstrate against any abridgement of the right to learn is not a privilege but a duty. It is not an act of bigotry but high patriotism. It is an attack on a policy, not on a religion, and to claim otherwise is to camouflage the issue.

Unable, or if able, then not daring, to make any attempt to controvert the serious arguments advanced, an attempt is made by specious camouflage to turn the whole controversy into religious channels where the proponents of the Amer ican system of education refuse to be led.

Facts are very stubborn things and facts are what we are trying to place before the American public today. Facts that cannot by any means or methods of camouflage be disguised or changed or altered.

It is a fact: That the writer has always and always will use his best efforts by pen and speech to uphold and advance the interests of the American public school system and for the abolition of illiteracy in the United States of America.

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