Today -100: June 13, 1919: Of red raids, white bread, and ruined children

Just as the NY Legislature begins its investigation into Teh Reds, cops and, for some reason, private detectives raid the Russian Soviet Bureau. Papers are removed and people questioned, and the chair of the investigating committee, Sen. Clayton Lusk (it will soon become known as the Lusk Committee), has come to the conclusion that the Russian Soviet Bureau is issuing propaganda intended to justify the Russian Soviet form of government. Gasp horrors.

Speaking of soviet forms of government, one is rumored to be proclaimed in Austria this coming Sunday. So something to look forward to.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Headline of the Day -100:  

According to an unnamed Swiss schoolteacher who has recently left Russia, children are now subjected to a regime of “unlimited indulgence of idleness and pleasure,” with no school books or homework, lots of dancing, illiterate teachers, and co-education (which, since religious education is banned, will obviously lead to moral depravity in a primitive country like Russia, she says).

In New York, high school students will be asked questions about the war. They can choose 4 questions to answer from 6 about battles, people, why the US entered the war, etc. But there’s a deeply suspicious question which is the only one mandatory for everyone to answer:

Accompanying this are these instructions to teachers: “call the Principal’s attention to any papers which show an especially intimate knowledge of this subject, those particularly which indicate that the pupils have been submitted to systematic training along this line. We are desirous of finding out to what extent Bolshevist ideas have been impressed upon the students of our high schools.”  The teachers’ union will object to this test, possibly believing that the administration is trying to fire teachers who may have taught radical ideas to their classes.

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