§ 25

In my dream I became aware that the cinema, which had become an abuse and a positive mischief, is under strict regulations. It catered to the lowest taste and became a very dangerous implement. Now, being under strict control of the same committee which manages the Communal theatre, it has become free of vice, and is not only a pleasant but instructive institution, and a picture palace is by no means an undignified place in which to pass an hour. There is plenty of fun there, but clean fun, and plenty of exciting situations are presented, but, while humour and wit are present, whatever might tend to decadence is absent. Individualists, who regard with suspicion any form of legislation which in pompous terms they call “interference with the liberty of the subject,” will be up in arms at the restrictions applied by a wise Government, forgetting, or perhaps never having read, in Plato’s “Republic” that the wise philosopher would protect the community from degradation created by exploiters out for themselves at the expense of a moral tone essential to stability and real progress. These will call the care of the people, implied by restrictions, “grandfatherly government,” forgetting that an ignorant crowd has to be guided to abstention from any poison in their midst, which may in time kill the soul of a nation.