Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/168

Counter-Currents by their mothers' sides, and whom the authorities of every town should exclude from all shows dealing with prostitution, are saved from defilement by the invincible ignorance of childhood. As for the groups of boys and young men who compose the larger part of the audiences, and who snigger and whisper whenever the situations grow intense, nobody in his senses could assert that the pictures convey a "moral lesson" to them.

Nor is it for the conveying of lessons that managers present these photo-plays to the public. They are out to make money, and they are making it. Granted that when M. Brieux wrote "Les Avariés," he purposed a stern warning to the pleasure-loving world. No one can read the simple and sober words with which he prefaced the work, and doubt his absolute sincerity. Granted, though with some misgivings, that the presentation of "Damaged Goods" in this country—albeit commercialized and a smart 152