The following words are not my own.
“The excessive emphasis on purely intellectual instruction and the neglect of physical training also encourage the emergence of sexual ideas at a much too early age. The youth who achieves the hardness of iron by sports and gymnastics succumbs to the need of sexual satisfaction less than the stay-at-home fed exclusively on intellectual fare. And a sensible system of education must bear this in mind. It must, moreover, not fail to consider that the healthy young man will expect different things from the woman than a prematurely corrupted weakling.”
“Parallel
to the training of the body, a struggle against the poisoning of the
soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for
sexual ideas and stimulations. Just look at the bill of fare served
up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be
able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly
for the youth. In shop windows and billboards the vilest means are
used to attract the attention of the crowd. Anyone who has not lost
the ability to think himself into their soul must realize that this
must cause great damage in the youth. This sensual, sultry atmosphere
leads to ideas and stimulations at a time when the boy should have no
understanding of such things. The result of this kind of education
can be studied in present-day youth, and it is not exactly
gratifying. They mature too early and consequently grow old before
their time. Sometimes the public learns of court proceedings which
permit shattering insights into the emotional life of our fourteen-
and fifteen-year-olds. Who will be surprised that even in these
age-groups syphilis begins to seek its victims? And is it not
deplorable to see a good number of these physically weak, spiritually
corrupted young men obtaining their introduction to marriage through
big-city whores?
No, anyone who wants to attack prostitution must
first of all help to eliminate its spiritual basis. He must clear
away the filth of the moral plague of big-city ' civilization ' and
he must do this ruthlessly and without wavering in the face of all
the shouting and screaming that will naturally be let loose. If we do
not lift the youth out of the morass of their present-day
environment, they will drown in it. Anyone who refuses to see these
things supports them, and thereby makes himself an accomplice in the
slow prostitution of our future which, whether we like it or not,
lies in the coming generation. This cleansing of our culture must be
extended to nearly all fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema,
press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all
manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a
moral political, and cultural idea. Public life must be freed from
the stifling perfume of our modern eroticism, just as it must be
freed from all unmanly, prudish hypocrisy. In all these things the
goal and the road must be determined by concern for the preservation
of the health of our people in body and soul.”
“The
theater was sinking manifestly lower and even then would have
disappeared completely as a cultural factor if the Court Theaters at
least had not turned against the prostitution of art. If we disregard
them and a few other praiseworthy examples, the offerings of the
stage were of such a nature that it would have been more profitable
for the nation to keep away from them entirely. It was a sad sign of
inner decay that the youth could no longer be sent into most of these
so-called ' abodes of art '-a fact which was admitted with shameless
frankness by a general display of the penny-arcade warning: 'Young
people are not admitted!'
Bear in mind that such precautionary
measures had to be taken in the places which should have existed
primarily for the education of the youth and not for the delectation
of old and jaded sections of the population. What would the great
dramatists of all times have said to such a regulation, and what,
above all, to the circumstances which caused it? How Schiller would
have flared up, how Goethe would have turned away in indignation!”