Page:The International Jew - Volume 2.djvu/100

 they constitute the last flashings of an era that has gone—an era that apparently leaves no great exemplars to perpetuate it.

The present-day average of intelligence appealed to in the American Theater does not rise above 13 to 18 years. “The tired business man” stuff (another Jewish expression) has treated the theatergoing public as if it were composed of morons. The appeal is frankly to a juvenile type of mind which can be easily molded to the ideals of the Hebraic theatrical monopoly. Clean, wholesome plays—the few that remain—are supported mainly by the rapidly vanishing race of theatergoers who survive from an earlier day; the present generation has been educated by the narrowed compass of modern dramatic themes to support plays of an entirely different type. Tragedy is taboo; the play of character, with a deeper significance than would delight the mind of a child, is out of favor; the comic opera has degenerated into a flash of color and movement—a combination of salacious farce and jazz music, usually supplied by a Jewish song-writer (the great purveyors of jazz!) and the rage is for extravaganza and burlesque.

The bedroom farce has been exalted into the first place. With the exception of “Ben Hur,” which is favored by Jewish producers apparently because it holds before the public a romantic picture of a Jew (a very un-Jewish Jew, by the way), the historical drama has given way to fleshly spectacles set off with overpowering scenic effects, the principal component of which is an army of girls (mostly Gentiles!) whose investment of drapery does not exceed five ounces in weight.

Frivolity, sensuality, indecency, appalling illiteracy and endless platitude are the marks of the American Stage as it approaches its degeneracy under Jewish control.

That, of course, is the real meaning of all the “Little Theater” movements which have begun in so many cities and towns in the United States. The art of the drama, having been driven out of the Theater by the Jews, is finding a home in thousands of study circles throughout the United States. The people cannot see the real plays; therefore they read them. The