Topics of the Times [excerpt]

     Those hasty clergymen, of more than one denomination, who made the crime of the man CZOLGOSZ the basis for vehement denunciation of public schools and the whole system of unsectarian education, may be moved to mitigate the violence of their remarks if their attention is called to certain facts which were brought out by the questions put to CZOLGOSZ just before he was sentenced. We have not yet seen the official report of the proceedings, and the newspaper accounts, including those printed in Buffalo, vary slightly—doubtless because of the low tones in which he spoke—as regards the schools CZOLGOSZ said he attended, some putting it as “small, common schools,” and others as “small German schools,” but all agree in quoting him as saying “Yes” to the two questions that followed—“Parochial schools?” and “Catholic schools?” Now this is very far indeed from proving that the seed of which the assassination of the President is the horrible blossom was planted in the man’s mind while he was a pupil in the schools he mentioned, but if believers in the public schools, the “godless” public schools, as their enemies are so fond of calling them, should say that it did prove exactly that, they would be doing precisely what was done by the clergymen who leaped eagerly to the conclusion that CZOLGOSZ would be useful to them as a frightful example in their campaign against the foundation of American institutions. As for ourselves, it is hardly necessary to say that we do not suspect parochial schools of teaching assassination, but we do want those who openly declared that CZOLGOSZ is a natural and inevitable product of the public schools to note and ponder the fact that at least a considerable part of such education as he had seems to have been acquired in the schools they regard as the effectual inspirers and guardians of all the virtues.