Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb 1914 - Sep 1916 (assorted issues))

Musings op the* PmoToplay Philosopher too broad, while others will think that they are too narrow. Such questions must always depend upon the personal equation. Bui at Leas! it is neither perfunctory nor time-serving, since it destroys annually half a million dollars worth of property. It would be an unusual law that could do that. Bui the hoard has certain definite standards that guide and regulate the idiosyncrasies of its members. All attacks upon religion are barred. There must he no crime for crime's sake: no prurient suggestiveness. And what may be called the news picture must be historically accurate. But these are secondary matters. The supreme tact is this triumphant exhibition of self-government, and it seems to be about the only example of self-government that we have. Amid a very orgy of coercions and legal brutalities, the National Board of Film Censors seems to he. in very truth, the first-fruits of a rational civilization. Coercive legislation is no more than a thin veneer upon a Pasis of barbarism. Compulsive laws and police are but a step from savagery, a slight advance over the aboriginal war-club, so astonishingly like a policeman's stall'. Tine civilization is mutual agreement, without sanctions and without force. We are still a long way from it, hut the board of censors proves it to be within sight. There is hardly a social problem that could not be solved in the same way: to place less reliance upon a crude legislation that invariably awakes resentments and resistances, and more reliance upon a public opinion that would he irresistible if it were allowed to grow. There is a certain "sweet reasonableness" in every human being that always responds to the co-operative appeal, that is always inclined to compromise and to agreement. We have been so swaddled in laws that we are almost blinded to the marvelous organizing powers of the race if only those powers are allowed to assert themselves spontaneously and naturally. But at least we have an object lesson. This is an age of marvelous philanthropy and human sympathy. We seem to be drawing nearer to that Utopian era of universal brotherhood, about which poets have sung and philosophers have preached. We have societies to look after the welfare of the poor ; we have charity organizations ; we have university settlements; we have societies to care for widows, for orphans, for babies, for all kinds of animals ; we have Young Men 's and Young AVomen 's Christian Associations, and so on, but there is just one that we have not — and it is one that is needed just as much if not more than some of the others — an organization in every community to look after the welfare of the man over fifty. Who will give or get the man of fifty a job ? The tendency of modern times is to employ the younger men. Men who have grown old in one employ are now thrust out to make room for the young. Who is to look after the man over fifty? And usually he has a family to support, Society today seems to say: "We'll give every baby and youth a good start in life, but after that we dont care what becomes of them." Why not find and develop industries in which the older men can shine ? Why crowTd our workshops with children and women when the man over fifty is walking the streets begging for work ? History shows that much of the world's best work has been done by men over fifty. While we have Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Milton and Bryant among those who became famous early in life, there is a long list of those who did their best work after fifty, such as Dryden, Chaucer, Burke, Shakespeare, Landor, Isaak Walton, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Cromwell, Pasteur, Mahommed, Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angel o. and even Milton and Bryant did their best work in old age. Such men as Solon. Sophocles, Pindar, Anacreon, Xenophon, Kant, Button, Goethe, Fontanelle. Newton, Titian, Harvey, Swift, Cowper and Lord ^ Bacon accomplished great things in their respective and varied lines in their old age. Why, then, this mania for youth, and why this neglect of the man over fifty ? 119