Robin Hood

An Indiana textbook commissioner last week struck a blow for decency and free enterprise by demanding that children cease all reading of the Robin Hood legend in schools. It is high time someone exposed the story for what it really is: a cleverly-disguised piece of dialectic materialism written by a Red-tainted radical far ahead of his time.

The story is a key step in the Communist plan to infiltrate young, innocent minds. What child has not heard this tale of a proletarian who robs from the rich to give to the poor? And what is more unalterably opposed to the American way of life than a communal band sharing their profit together in the woods?

The author of this subversive piece uses every device at his command to paint a grim picture of capitalism in the person of the Sheriff of Nottingham. We are told that he lives in splendor from the immense sums he extorts from the other bourgoisic. There is the implication that he profits directly from the labors of others.

Even the lesser characters are hewed to the party line. Maid Marion is subtly un-American as she romps with the Merrie Men and casually disavows Motherhood. Friar Tuck is nothing if not the cleric who has lost all vestiges of his religion in the service of the state. But the author was most clever in his treatment of Little John; by proper manipulation of the dialectic, Little John Becomes its antithesis, Big Joe.

As the plot unfolds, more and more evidence of Commie propaganda is visible. The shire is on a five-year-plan to recover deer loses. But the climax comes in the blood purge at the end of the legend. Like Trotsky, Robin is found guilty of disloyalty to the state and is efficiently purged.

As Indiana's textbook commissioner said, "There is a Communist directive in education now to stress the story of Robin Hood." Such a forthright cry deserves applause. America's youth must be saved from so insidious a menace.