It is not for us Americans, however, to jeer at Stratford-on-Avon for its aggressive conservatism. Our immediate ancestors blocked the wheels of progress in many mischievous, if not laughable, ways. The School Board of Lancaster, Ohio, adopted in 1826 the following resolution: “Such things as railroads are impossibilities and rank infidelity. If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles per hour by steam, He would clearly have foretold it through His holy prophets.” The advent of the bath-tub, destined to be one of the crowning glories of America, was denounced by our medical men as a menace to the public health. Philadelphia, Pa., in 1843, endeavored by ordinance to prohibit all bathing between the months of November and March. Boston, Mass., in 1845, made bathing, except when prescribed by a physician, unlawful, and, at about the same time, Virginia put a tax of thirty dollars a year upon every bath-tub in a commonwealth that can claim to be the cradle of American liberty! Whatsoever is new under the sun must fight for its place in the sun. For centuries the printing-press had to struggle for freedom against powerful restrictive influences that looked upon it as “an agent of the Devil.” The telegraph, telephone, bicycle, automobile and wireless have all had their bigoted opponents, who feared that the broadening of humanity’s contacts would become an increasing menace to their own narrow beliefs and habits. Is it strange, then, that the movie, a new form of art qualified to make an instant appeal to both the good and the bad in human nature, should have had, at the outset of its career, a hard struggle to justify itself to the more conservative elements of the community? Bad boy that he was in his earlier years, the movie made it difficult for a public largely puritanical in its origins and tendencies to believe that the youngster could be reformed, that he had in him untried and unmeasurable powers for upward progress, that he was a prodigal son of Art and Science fated to exercise a controlling influence upon the destinies of the race. However, there is an element in the make-up of the American people that leads it, even at the eleventh hour, to institute reforms whenever an institution seemingly worth saving must either be heroically treated or permitted to go completely to the dogs. There came a time when negro slavery must be destroyed if our Federal Constitution was to survive. At an enormous cost of life and treasure, the blacks were freed and the Union preserved. It became apparent recently to the American public that there were destructive influences at work within our three most popular forms of amusement, that our stage, our base-ball diamond and our movie screen were in jeopardy from internal perils, as were our governmental institutions in the early sixties.