=It is the symbol of HIS OWN STRENGTH and power to meet and slay the
dragon--the evil he encounters.=
Thus, down the path of life you have him started. He goes alone. He
is protected by no governmental wet-nursism. No censors have preceded
him to chase the dragons from his path. Now, just imagine the censors
doing that, be they a certain type of dear, old ladies who never will
be satisfied that anything is good if it pictures vice or crime, or
well-meaning Puritans with worse complexes, or crafty politicians with
itching palms, snooping into every crack and cranny for the smell
of dragons (evil) to shoo them off the path before young George may
proceed upon his way.
I hear them saying, “Come on, Georgie, dear boy; the path is clear;
we censors have done your work; we have seen to it that not even a
suspicious tabby cat can cross your path. You have no fight to make; we
will spare you even the sight of a dragon (evil) on the road.”
Is that what you are going to do to Young America? Change the noble
knighthood of conflict and struggle to the milksophood of apron
strings? Yet such is governmental censorship. Against it, I protest.
Against it, modern youth revolts. I beseech you in their name, that you
avoid a step so fatal and so false.
I know you do not want to make mollycoddles of this younger generation
because a few morons or even alert, but vicious-minded, persons,
have become criminals from something good or bad they have seen in
the movies. I do not want to see methods adopted in mistaken purpose
of fighting evil whose effect is only to make insipid, dependent,
hot-house plants of modern youth.
=I want to see a self-reliant Young America. I want to see it grow
to sturdy manhood, like the oak that faces and fights the storm and
fights best where the foe is known best and encountered most.=