WHAT SHALL WE READ?

NZ Truth, Issue 174, 17 October 1908, Page 6

WHAT SHALL WE READ?

E. D. Giles, of Mount . Parnassus, Cheviot, writes an excellent letter about tho late prosecutions of Christchurch booksellers for selling Victoria Cross's books. He says the prosecutions call for moro attention • than may be given to them by the presumably liberty-loving people oi New Zealand. He didn't, wish to defend the sale of such degenerate trash aa "Anna Lombard," the only one he had read, but the mere fact that attention has been drawn to the novel will increase its sale tenfold and will probably lead to what ODe finds m America ,( where the magazine sellers whisper to you that they have suppressed books for sale. The) real crux of the position was that Magistirato Bishop told them that b.ooksellers ,. must employ a reader of all new books, and the standard at. which publication will be allowed was that of a nttoeen-year-olcl miss. The last case against Shakespeare, which was dismissed, led one to suppose that any book, however lewd or outspoken, if old enough, might pass muster, but as the length of time necessary for whitewashing' wasn't stated itXmade one tremble for such standard writers as T. Hardy, Eden' Phillpotts, De Morgan, Galsworthy, or even George Meredith. Had it come to this, that a bookseller's hacK was to be our censor of morals even whei) he might have the shadow of the church m the background ? Christchurch was truly an exemplary city, where the "Clarion" was shut out of the public library by clerical, influence, although such a Church and State paper as the "Spectator" thought no harm of it. A move would soon be made at all unorthodox . publications, and we should find Darwin, Haeckel and others among the forbidden authors. "The price of liberty," concludes Giles, "is eternal vigilance, and a model Christchurch may be another name for a model penitentiary."