TO-DAY'S PERVERTED INTERESTS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 7, 9 July 1923, Page 7

TO-DAY'S PERVERTED INTERESTS

"MOVING PICTURE BRAINS"

A VIGOROUS INDICTMENT.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.)

(AUSTKAUAX - NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

(Received 9th July, 9 a.m.)

LONDON, Bth July

Mr. J. M. Beck, United States Soli-citor-General, in an outspoken address to the English-speaking Union, said:

r' We are living in an age of the moving picture brain, in which no man remembers in the evening what he heard in the morning, when lie no longer considers the truth or falsity of the thing he reads." He recalled a conversation with King Albert of Belgium, in which reference was made to the men who went to death with a smile during the war. The King replied: " Yes. And the heroes to-day ar e Charles Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks." Mr. Beck said that the English-speaking races were approaching dangerously near the " hippodrome period," which marks th c decay of a race. "If Shakespeare returned to earth," h e _ said, "he would be required to write a bodroom farce with plenty ofjjpep ' in it. Shakespeare would reply that he had written two bedroom plays, 'Othello ' and ' Cymbeline,' but the modern manager would retort, 'We don t what high-brown stuff, but the maximum of manly excitement ivith the minimum of intellectual effort.' When I camo to London the newspaper placards wore recording ' Suzanne Lenglen in tears,' and 'Hobbs not out.' The fact is that the time has como when a little healthy pessimism would be the best foundation for the reconstruction of the world.".