REVERENCE IN LITERATURE.

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 19, 22 January 1921, Page 16

REVERENCE IN LITERATURE.

Bishop Weldon, .on Mrs. . Asquith's Autobiography:'. * / : " May I plead.'that writers to-day will ,nbt violate the sanctities of life? '.'lt is, not fair or--right that private conversar tions should be published to all the world even they are correctly .reported. But : how 'difficult it is to.recall the actual language of a conversation which niay have lasted an hour. . A conversatipii,, too', is not the same thing when it takes plafle among friends in the intimauy of private life, and when,, it is set down in print, that every stranger may read it. I am one who holds that conversation should.never be made public unless with the knowledge ami good will of the parties thereto."What.has happened of late? Have there not been books, and books, too, written by responsible ■ persons, where the veil, not of delicacy alone but of decency, is rudely torn asunder, and the hard outside world is encouraged to gloat over the most sacred of human experiences, the love scenes and the death scenes which should be hidden from common eyes, especially when they whose hearts were torn and bruised, and they whose lives were untimely ended, are lying, in the grave. I deeply regret— rlay, is it too much to say that everyone here regrets?—that the bad taste which profands' the sanctities), of life should be associated even . indii'ectly with^ the highest political office in the land."