DEGENERATE BOOKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13781, 20 June 1908, Page 5 (Supplement)

DEGENERATE BOOKS.

FATHER BERNARD VAUGHAN'S FLEA FOR A CENSOR. We have a rigid inspection system for the food wo eat. Why not also of articles for mental consumption? So asks Father Bex--nard Vaughan, in the course of a fiery denunciation of the alleged degenerate tendencies of modern fiction. Speaking before a large gathering at the Oxford Town Hail, Father Vaughan condemned what lie called " the putrid stream of foul fiction which was actually doing more to undermine the moral health of the rising generation than ever tiie rottenest slum did to destroy lite physical well-being of a generation "gone by"" He declared that the garbage which was ' being served out to the youth of this country between its hours of work and play, or of gambling and golfing, was spreading among them a plague, which he could only describe as the Black Death. He had before him three novels sent him by a leading professional man (not a Catholic), and, after a glance at the unclean things, he could endorse the diagnosis of his friend, and oxclaim " Plague-breeding products." Was it not high time that some kind of censorship should be exercised in articles of mental as well as of bodily consumption? Was a clean and healthy mind of less account than a vigorous body? Putting all religious motives aside, surely the patriotic instinct, if worth preserving, ought to awaken a public protest, against a state of things which, if not checked, would lead inevitably to national corruption. But some could see notuing more in it than in Colliers Academy picture, " Sentence of Death." Of course, lie would be accused by those who did not want to know the truth, of exaggeration. Let them consult publishers, librarians, book-stall and lending library holders, asking them what books, what reviews, what dailies, were most in request by England's rising generation.

A palm which grows in South America has a leaf measuring 50ft long and. 12ft broad—the largest iu the world.