That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future (1923)

186 THAT MARVEL— THE MOVIE in the twentieth century, despite the noise now made by short-sighted, misguided or actually unprincipled champions of movie censorship — a censorship that, were there nothing else to urge against it, is an unnecessary and expensive luxury in light of the fact that the States and cities of our nation are adequately provided with laws and ordinances protecting the amusement-seeking public from indecent and immoral exhibitions. The Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., one of the ablest, most eloquent, scholarly and influential divines in this country, referring in a recent sermon to matters touched upon in this chapter, said : The descendants of the Puritans and the Dutchmen, whose fathers rebelled against the censors of the James I era, dictating to them what creed and government they must accept, find it hard, after three hundred years of freedom of press and speech, to go back to the very thing from which their ancestors fled. Long ago the historians said that the American Republic was the vision of John Milton in his plea for the liberty of the printing press, set up in code and constitution. The genius of our Republic is personal responsibility, individual excellence. A father and mother must rise up early and sit up late to teach their boy and girl to think for themselves, using their intellect; to weigh for themselves, using their judgment; to decide for themselves, using their own conscience and will.