THE CENSORSHIP OF LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18766, 20 January 1923, Page 9

THE CENSORSHIP OF LITERATURE.

The current topic of literary censorship in the dominion has been engaging the attention of the Controller of Customs and the Minister of Internal Affairs, — not, as it seems to us, with conspicuously illuminating results. There appears still to bo a feeling of doubt in some quarters as to who is responsible for the censorship; but we hare previously shown, by citations from Ministerial statements recorded in Hansard, that the ultimate responsibility of decision rests with the Attorney-General. He acts upon, or at least receives, the advice of a presumably competent “taster,” whose identity, perhaps for sufficient reasons, is not disclosed. This being the case, it would have been better if the task of making official comments or explanations in connection with the present controversy had been left to Sir Francis Bell. The Customs Department acts automatically in carrying out the Attorney-General’s instructions. “That is all the connection I have with the matter,” declared the Controller of Customs to a press representative the other day; • and we do not know, therefore, why Mr Montgomery thought fit to indulge in a gratuitous expression of opinion concerning an ethical aspect cf fhe censorship. “He could not tell why •‘•he booksellers wished to import such books as were banned, and it was not right that a certain section of young men and girls, and people generally at what was known as the adolescent age, should have access to their contents.” That rather dogmatic and ad captaadum dictum begs part of the question at issue; and anyhow the matter does not pertain to the Controller’s province. The Minister of Internal Affairs did not show to his best advantage in' dealing with the subject. Mr Downie Stewart enjoys a very favourable reputation in respect to sagacity, shrewdness, and intellectual seriousness, but it cannot be said that he brought those qualities closely to bear upon his apologia for the present condition of the censorship. His remarks were rather inconsequential, and he seems to. have shown some traces of antiquated obscurantist prejudice. In reference to his remark that tho operation of the censorship system was at least as open to ridicule in England as it was in New Zealand, it is surely sufficient to recall the axiom that two blacks do not make a white; and when he states that the only alternative to the present system would be to have recourse to the provisions of the Indecent Publications Act, and points a warning that prosecutions would inevitably have the effect of increasing the vogue of allegedly objectionable literature, it is pertinent to ask what has been, or is likely to be, the effect of the censorial action recently taken in regard to a particular book. The arbitrary and virtually (though not nominally) irresponsible nature of the existing method is not consistent with democratic and equitable principle, while it is not inconsistent with the possibility of indulgence in narrow prejudice. The Christchurch Press suggests that “the decision as to the admission or banning of any book should be made, not by a single unknown official, responsible to no one but his departmental chief, but by a Board of Censors, over whom Parliament and the public could exercise some measure of direct control, and that they should act in accordance with definite and stated rules and principles, so that the public might know and be able to judge the reasons inspiring their verdict.” A possible objection to this proposal is that the public might be only too ready to take a hand in discussing the merits of tho cases brought before the board. Our own view is that very little censoring is required. This is an age of literary freedom, and the spirit of the time is opposed to measures of prudish restriction, which are generally unreasonable and invariably ineffective. Of course, there is a line to be drawn between the permissible and the intolerable. Pornographic atrocities are rightly banned, and perhaps the magistrate is the best Judge as to what publications come under that category.