NO POISON IN THE CAMPS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 51, 2 March 1937, Page 8

NO POISON IN THE CAMPS

Most poisons respond to some chemical test, and their character can be determined beyond question; but whether mental poisons come within this category is another question. In principle, most people will agree that what is mentally poisonous is undesirable; but disagreement begins immediately an attempt is made to define poisonous literature. There is no chemical test; and a play like "The.Second Mrs. Tanqueray," deemed morally poisonous by one generation, is called commonplace by another. Thus the drama, the novel, and history have been the despair of censors, however well-intentioned and judicial the censor may be. Some interest is therefore aroused when the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Semple) foreshadows <a censorship (or what seems to be such) in Public Works camps' libraries. Mental poison, he said,

will not be allowed in libraries at the camps. He added that he did not refer to books on revolutionary history, but to leaflets specially prepared in pamphlet form for the purpose of stirring up strife.

Political poison is not less difficult to define than is moral poison; and historical bias is as elusive as is moral- bias. It does not seem that any censorship has ever satisfactorily separated history from propaganda, and the absence of a chemical test for propaganda, to be applied to history, has led to many censorship arguments. Can Mr. Semple take the hiss out of history and the ganda out of propaganda without stirring up a great discussion? His impartiality, however, must be admitted. Even for an expert with the doublebarrelled gun, a shot to the left at Communists and a shot to the right at bankers is a, brisk double, quite as novel as pulping a wheelbarrow with a steam shovel.