OBSCENE LIBEL

Evening Star, Issue 21098, 10 May 1932, Page 9

OBSCENE LIBEL

THE DE MONTALK CASE. NO REMISSION OF SENTENCE. »re» A»«oei»tiom —By T*l**r»pV—Copjriflrt. LONDON, May 9. (Received May 10, at 11.45 a.m.) In the House of Commons Sir Herbert Samuel (Home Secretary) stated that he was unable to recommend remission of the sentence on De Montalk, which the Appeal Court upheld. Sentence of six months’ imprison-; tneut in tho second division was passed by the Recorder (Sir Ernest Wild, K.C.) at the Central Criminal Court on Geoffrey Wladisla Potocki De Montalk, 46, described as a lecturer, who was found guilty of_ uttering and publishing an obscene libel. The defendant pleaded not guilty. Mr G. P. Jordan prosecuted; Mr Du Cann appeared for the defence. Mr Jordan, in opening the case, said that De Montalk went with another man to Mr Leslie De Lozey, managing director of Comps Ltd., Kirby street, Hatton Garden, and asked him to set the manuscript which was the subject of the prosecution in type. Mr De Lozey suggested that the matter was obscene, but after a _ discussion he quoted a price for the job. After De Montalk had left Mr De Lozey communicated with the police. When De Montalk was arrested at his address at Edith road, Hammersmith, he said; “ We certainly do go to that firm, but I fail to see where any obscene libel comes in.” Mr De Lozey, in his evidence, said that De Montalk told him his publishers would not print the manuscript, but they would allow him to print it himself on their machines. De Montalk asked him to put it in type. In the witness box Do Montalk said he was a British subject born in New Zealand. His grandfather was a Polish count, and he himself was entitled to call himself count. He did not regard any of his poems as obscene. Some of them were translated from Rabelais. The manuscript in question was intended as a literary experiment for publication among his friends, who were literary people. He had not the slightest intention of publishing jt to the general public. Mr Du Cann, addressing the jury, admitted that it was not a case of a depraved man seeking to deprave others, but of a poet writing for a small circle of poets and literary experimenters to test certain words. Serious-minded writers like D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce used words regarded as objectionable in order to make them respectable. The Recorder, summing up, said that a man must not say he was a poet and bo filthy. He had to obey the law just the same as ordinary citizens, and the sooner the highbrow school learnt that the bettor for the morality of the country. . . Tho jury, without leaving the box, found De Moutalk guilty, ilud the Recorder passed sentence as stated. His Lordship said that no decent-minded jury could have come to any other decision than that the defendant had attempted to deprave our literature.