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Show Russia Removes Fairy Bans Childish Classics Restored, Though the Russians Ycre hy No Means the First to Consider Nursery Literature Dangerous. If the belief is widespread that the world is going mad, counter-evidence Is furnished in a quarter least to be 'suspected Kussia. 'That country has removed its ban on children's classics and fairy tales "Itohinson Crusoe" is first on the list of nursery favorites to be reprinted by the hundred thousand. It may be that this book will not come from the press just as Defoe wrote it, for it has an element of piety that Soviet Russia does not formally endorse. Itobei-t Lynd, of the News-Chronicle (London), finds it difficult to understand un-derstand how the Russian authorities authori-ties originally came to believe that reading the nursery classics was likely like-ly to turn good Bolshevik children I into wicked reactionaries. lie points out that "The Emperor's New Clothes" is "as sharp a satire on the ways of courtiers ns any Communist could have written." Also he argues that the marriage of a poor man with a princess or a poor girl with a king might be used as propaganda for human equality, but ideas were rushing too fast in one direction for Soviet officials to see it that way. He draws upon America for support: "The American Republic has survived sur-vived the perils implicit in fairy tales for a century and a half without ever having had to revise the stories so as to make the beggar-maid marry the president instead of the king and to leave Cinderella living happily ever J after as the wife of the mayor of New York." Mr. Lynd does the Russians justice jus-tice in saying that they have not been the Crst people to suspect the presence of poison in nursery literature. litera-ture. "There have been Puritans of 'so stern a cast that they looked on fairy tales as frivolous lies which it was dangerous to put into the hands of children." It might also be added that modern radicals have come near .the Puritan ideal by condemning fairy tales for another reason that they give false ideals of life. Our early Puritans may have known nothing of these stories and so did not condemn them, but the 'substitutes they offered are shown in a recent book by Dr. A. S. Rosen-bach, Rosen-bach, "Early American Children's ; Books," upon which Miss Carolyn Wells offers this comment in the New York American : "To me the book is of absorbing Interest, because it convinces me of something I have heretofore refused jto believe in the stern and rock- bound hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers. I felt the awful tales of their strict Bnd rigorous training of young peo- pie must be exaggerated, If not positively posi-tively untrue. But judging, as one may and must, by the literature given giv-en to youth in those times, it is evident evi-dent that the Fathers were more cruel to their offspring than the younger generation of today is to its parents. "The first book for children printed in America, published, in Boston In 1GS2, was 'The Rule of the New-Creature to Be Practiced Every Day, in All the Particulars of It Which Are Ten.' T1m? book begins thus: 'Be sensible of thy Original Corruption daily, how it inclines thee to evil, and indisposeth thee to good ; groan under it and bewail it' "I had no reason to be surprised at these admonitions, for at my own Sunday school I recited from an Infant In-fant catechism, which I still remember remem-ber almost word for word. One of its early questions was: 'What are you then, by nature?' To which my glib reply (for I always knew tny lessons) was, 'f am an enemy of God. a child of .Siilitn and an heir of hell.' "At Hint time I had reached the mature age of four." Literary Digest. |