INDECENT LITERATURE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19622, 18 May 1929, Page 11

INDECENT LITERATURE.

HOME SECRETARY'S VIEWS. APPEAL to authors. Or*on ovu owi cobusfosseft.) „ LONDON, April 5. •following upon a successful prosecution a deputation representing the LonPublic Morality Council waited uftoa the Home Secretary and urged that it should be made a punishable offence to sell to persons under eighteen books calculated to corrupt the morals of the young. Sir W. Joynson-Hicks declared that no special legislation was at present necessary, as tho existing law was enough. He appealed to authors to help their country and to help themselves by not foreing publio opinion to such an extent that the demand for some form of literary censorship will be impossible to resist. In the course of his reply, Sir William said that since January Ist, 1923, there had been 73 prosecutions in this country in connexion with the importation and sale of various indecenctes. "We find very frequently," he said, "young people write to Paris or Berlin or any other centre in answer to advertisements which appear in periodicals, sending money for the importation of these indecencies. We nearly always abstain from prosecutions, but the Director of Public Prosecutions or the head of the police in the district generally sends for these young people —very often from a university or public school —and points out the stupidity of what they are doing. And I think I may say never again have we found the same lad or girl writing for indecencies. These warnings tako place in considerable numbers each year." Sir William said that when he was in trouble over a certain book two months ago a well-known writer came to him and said: "I come from one of our universities to say you really must exercise your jurisdiction in these mattors. This kind of literature is getting into our unversities, is on sale in university towns, and, speaking as a man concerned with the education of our university students, I tell you of the damage it is doing, and it is your duty to exereise the power that Parliament has entrusted to you." A well-known author, whose name was a household word throughout the Umpire, said the Home Secretary, was all on the side of decency. Such author# were not worried in the least by the idea of the Home Secretary exercising a "literary censorship." "I am doing nothing of the kind," declared Sir William. "I am not a litorary censor. I have no qualifications for the post. My duty is to see that the law is carried out." Mr Bernard Shaw's Views. Sir William quoted from an article which recently appeared in the public press in whi«h the writer said: "I have always maintained that if ever wo have a literary censorship in England it is the authors who will be responsible for its existence.

"I think," commented Sir "William, "that la true. A certain number of these books which I, unfortunately, am bound to read, are too grossly vulgar. I am very glad indeed to see a gentleman with whom I do not always perhaps ajjree—Mr Bernard Shaw —who, stating* his view regarding the article frtfn whfeh I quoted, said: 'I do n#t think a literary censorship will become necessary. There are already facilities for dealing with books that offend public decency.' Mr Bernard Shaw apparently agrees, and I am very glad he does, that these laws which are passed for the purpose of dealing with indecencies should be enforced. It is mv duty to enforce them. I am very glad sueh an eminent writer as Mr Bernard Shaw should have publicly stated his approval of the enforcement of the law."

Mr Archibald Allen, chairman of the Public Morality Council, who led the deputation, said that there were certain publishers and writers who were otornally trying to go one better or possibly one worse in the matter _of putting before the public something that really exceeded the border-line of decency. "Of course," he said, "the object of this is £.s.d., which letters, I think, might stand for a slogan, 4 Let's.sell dirt.' " Decency "To be foul-mouthed and blasphemous has ever been the hall-mark of the unintelligent, the Caliban among men," says the "Daily Telegraph," commenting on the Bubjeet. "It seems strange that it should have now become the prerogative of novelists, for authors, like artists, are surely set apart to show as the way to sweetness and light, not to degrade us, but to elevate ns. It is to be hoped that we have reached the nadir of foalness in fiction, and that the young novelists now writing will take to heart the lesson read them by the Home Secretary. They will find that a retnrn to good manners and cleanly habits will not diminish their popularity. The number of those who are willing to pay money to be disgusted is not so large as that of those who are willing to pay to be entertained."