Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1909. TAINTED LITERATURE: A NEW ZEALAND OPPORTUNITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXI, Issue 7932, 14 December 1909, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1909. TAINTED LITERATURE: A NEW ZEALAND OPPORTUNITY.

Off and on for a number of years now much has been &aid about the evil influence of novels that treat of the relations of the sexes with a coarse or morbid suggestiveness. New Zealand booksellers have been prosecuted for selling such books, but no real good seems ever to come of such methods. The tainted books are advertised, and their writers gain in notoriety, very likely with the result of increasing the demand for the poisonous trash. In England just now they are adopting more promising methods, for some of the ?j;reat circulating libraries have agreed to exclude books of the kind referred to from their lists. For some reason, a'few popular authors who are not personally purveyors of pruriency protest against this decision, but there can be no doubt that the solid body of the British people approve of it, or that it is urgently needed, and will do great good if the libraries loyally continue to give effect to it. A proof of how general this view must be is found in tho fact that the council of the British Mothers' Union, representing 300,000 members, supports the action of the circulating libraries. This union, it may be observed, seeks to uphold the sanctity of marriage, to impress on mothers their responsibility for the training of their children, and to unite mothers of all classes in these aims, and in caring for and promoting the religious instruction of the young. It works through literature of different grades, libraries, addresses by trained speakers, and other means. As far as has been reported at the central office, its numbers stood in 1908 at 5977 branches and 298,707 members and associates. They belong to Diocesan organisations in England and Wales; to the Scottish Mothers' Union; Mothers' Union in Ireland; to the Army Division ; to Australia, including Tasmania and Melanesia; to New Zealand, India, South Africa, Canada, West Indies, Falkland Islands, Algiers, China, South Japan, Madagascar, Singapore, and West Equatorial Africa. As behind all this organisation, there is a. still vaster body of opinion, the action of the English circulating libraries cannot be said to lack support; and no doubt the movement will spread to the colonies. In the meantime there is no reason why the colonies themselves should not make- an effective beginning in the matter. In New Zealand tliis # might be done with comparative ease in connection- with all railway bookstalls, and in connection with the sale of all printed matter on travelling trains. These branches of bookselling are conducted under contract with the Railway Department, which should have no difficulty in devising and enforcing methods which would end in no "literature" of the kind referred to being sold on the railway trains or at tho railway bookstalls of the dominion. This would be much in itself, and would aid in bringing about the wider reform of doing away altogether with the sale of such works in the country. But with regard to the railways the change might easily be made, and it cannot be made too soon, to judge by the corrupt character of some of the printed stuff that is sold on the trains. A specimen of this was bought the other day by a gentleman who was travelling by train from Christchurch to Ashburton. He bought the book quite casually, he had no knowledge or suspicion of the nature of its contents, and had no motive in buying it except the very general wish to pass a little time in a little inoffensive light reading. Scores —hundreds — of people of both sexes, young and old, do this, and all these people are presumably likely to find themselves in the possession of books of the kind that this gentleman found himself possessed of in this instance. The book is beside iis as we write, and as a matter of public duty wo have read it. It is written with a certain crude cleverness, but the subject is degraded and likely to contribute to the degradation of the taste and the conscience of young and unreflecting persons with minds open to prurient suggestions, or likely to be influenced by the example of a "hero," whose life of deliberate immorality is described sometimes with coarseness, sometimes with insidious lewdness, but never with a touch of reprehension, scorn or warning. No doubt the character and career of the "hero" are caricatures and exaggerations: few if any such unconscionable vagabonds exist, and few if any men succeed to such an extent in their villany. But this makes the offence of having such creatures as "heroes" all the greater. We shall send the book to the Premier, in the hope that he .may commend it very specially to the attention of his colleague tho Minister of Railways, with a view to some such reform as that •which we have suggested in this article. The State by sanctioning the sale of such works in connection with a Department immediately and completely under its control lends itself—of course, it has done so unconsciously up to the present —to the corruption of the young; a thing of far more importance, and much harder to undo or make amends for, than all the experimental land legislation in the world. W© trust that the government will use its opportunely in this very grave matter.