The significance of a recent election held in one of our historic cradles of liberty, the State that can boast of Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill, in connection with the subject under discussion can hardly be over-estimated. In 1921 the legislature of Massachusetts was induced to pass a censorship law. By petition it became a matter for referendum, and on November 7, 1922, the electorate of the Bay State voted upon the question whether or not they desired a censorship of the motion picture. The people defeated the measure by a vote of 553,173 to 208,252, a majority of 344,921 against censorship. Again had Massachusetts given an outward and visible sign of her inward and spiritual detestation of Toryism not essentially different in kind from that which she displayed when “a snuffy old drone from a German hive” was endeavoring, by force of arms, to hold her in leading-strings. What intrigues, if it does not startle and perplex, a thoughtful historian in connection with the above is that to-day in this country there is a clash, affecting the lives of every one of us, between the ideals which a century and a half ago placed George of England and George of Virginia in opposite and warring camps upon certain basic propositions connected with the subject of human liberty. But it is inconceivable, of course, that the spirit of George the Thirdism can have anything but a temporary influence in the United States 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.