Is It Coming to This?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 17, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 11.

Is It Coming to This?

A reliable correspondent writes us from the East that in one of the public schools of Brooklyn, N. Y., a little boy eight years of age, for refusing to comply with a teacher’s request to salute the flag, and perform a military march around the room, presenting imaginary arms when passing the flag, was punished by being compelled to stand all day during his studies. The next day his hands were slapped with a ruler. His mother called on the teacher, and she excused herself on the plea of “patriotism.” The principal of the school pleaded ignorance of the matter and properly stopped what never should have begun. But is this the patriotism, the liberty, equality, and fraternity, inculcated and vouchsafed by our public schools and the flag? Is not liberty, if one so desires, the freedom conscientiously to refuse to pay homage or reverence to a mere symbol? If such a régime is inaugurated as is contemplated by the “patriotic” measure before the New York Legislature and reduced to practise prematurely by this Brooklyn teacher, the flag will come to be an emblem, not of freedom, but of cruel, unmitigated tyranny. We have flag salutes in the Oakland schools. The teachers have justly and wisely excused those who desired to be excused from taking part.