The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-09
SANTA' BOOKS
 URGED BY HEIGHT
 TO SAVE NATION
Censored Writer Would Have Cabinet Placard
 Bad Literature
By HARLAN 6. MILLER ft tUepUlsht, ts24l

E ift tOepTteht, tS<D
 ' CHICAGos March S.-Ben Hecht, writer Of books the censors love to suppress, has turned 100 per cent American and aches to save his country
 .sLet the cabinet save it with cen sorship," urged Hecht, who is tenn porarily writing toothpaste ads and bed. time stories to earn the $1,O0O he must contribute periodically to the federal treasury for writing the exotic Fan tazius Mallare!''
 Hecht suggests a national "index ex- purgatorius" as the only practicable method to rescue nice people from read ing books that are not nice and that make sceptical, suspicious citizens out of them.
 Will Fool Elm
 At present, Hecht is engaged in writ ing two novels, between small laudatory essays on silk hosiery. One of these is sequel to "Fantazius," which he says will be so moral that censors won't be Interested or SO intellectual that they can't possibly comprehend it. It is called ''The Kingdom of Evil.
 Each Tuesday, at the cabinet meet ing. Hecht suggested, as he sat at his desk and formulated a new slogan for an overall factory, President Cool tdge might pass out a few suspected volumes, from writers known to be tainted, to members of his cabinet
 "These gentlemen, selected for their probity and knowledge of literature as much as for their acquaintance with the stock market, could read the books in their spare time.
 st'.Any books they found to contain ideas menacing the republic might then De blazoned in red ink on posters, to be displayed prominently in all post offices and federal penitentiaries. Decent citi- sens would be warned not to read the books, and they wouldn't
 Must Be Idealists
 The smooth, untroubled government of republic, Hecht explained, requires that the citizens, at least, be idealists.
 If the citizens have flawless faith in virture and morality, it leaves their government that much more time to keep the oil wells safe from misuse by the Fmilitarists and navy. said Hecht.
 stOnly a suspicious. citizenry-or rather, a few suspicious citizens, are to blame for this oil scandal. An ideal kstic electorate, brought up on decent, Santa Claus literature, would never lave suspected anything was wrong everything would still be lovely
 Writers, according to Hecht, are pained when their book falls into the bands of persohs with illusions and de stroys those illusions. They prefer that their books circulate among sophisti- cafed persons, who read them for the amusement and beauty in them.
 Author Given "Creeps"
 'sNothing gives an author the creeps more than to think that some benighted persons seek in his stories certain tur- gid experiences they have failed to find In actual life.
 s.Possibly it is safer for the republic that the books suffice. But the re- public, perhaps, dares not experiment with the novel idea of broad education. Better the ban on bad books"
 Hecht is confident that any man or woman with the type of brain that is damaged by reading a so-called spicy or immoral story would refrain from reading it at all if a cabinet official, say the Secretary of the Interior for ex- ample, advised him an a red poster that the story is not good for them.