In its bitter hatred against everything German, the Chicago Times once more attacks German instruction in the public schools.

English, the Times says, is the language of the country and only this should the young be taught. We simply deny that English is the language of the country. It is one of the languages of the country that is recognized as official because it is the native language of a majority of the inhabitants. And that is all! For more than a million of American citizens German is the native language; for some hundreds of thousands, French; for tens of thousands, Norwegian or Swedish. All these languages have their good right on the side of English. The United States are not a part of England. It is true that in the course of time the numerically weakest nationalities have dissolved into the by far stronger English, but that does not mean that all other nationalities must follow the same course. The Germans at any rate will not do so. Their co-nationals have had a great part in the original settlement of the country; Germans have populated Pennsylvania and the Mohawk Valley possibly before the ancestors of wilbur F. Storey had emigrated from England. If they were all living together in one state, like the Italians in Switzerland in the Canton of Tessin, then even the most hidebound Anglo-Celt would not think of disputing the designation of German as one of the American languages of the 2country.

The Times says, "When King William would promulgate his decrees in English, and when English would be taught in the public schools in Germany, then the time would have come to teach German in American Schools." The first part of the comparison is improper in so far as nobody demands that the official language of the United States should be Germans. As regards the Second, the Times may be interested to know that in the public schools of the provinces of Posen and of Prussia, Polish is being taught (besides German); and in these of Northern shcloswig, Danish. In Alsatia, for almost a century German was taught under the French rule. That did not prevent the Alsatians from being very good and faithful citizens of French - and so the German speaking Americans will be all the better citizens of the public when their native language is recognized as one of the lawful languages of the country.