TRIMMING DOWN DIVORCE REPORTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17833, 29 April 1926, Page 5

TRIMMING DOWN DIVORCE REPORTS.

OUTSPOKEN ATTACKS MADE ON NEW BILL t- LEGAL ABSURDITIES.

SEX PLAYS AND LOW-TYPE NOVELS REMAIN UNTOUCHED—PERVERTS OPENLY INTRODUCED.

LONDON, March 18. The attempts of well-meaning persons to improve the morals of their fellows by the creation of new laws sometimes has the strangest results, and a Bill that has just gone through the House of Lords, and is about to be considered by the Commons, perhaps reaches the "apex of absurdity, although its designs may be most laudable.

The Bill deals with the regulation of newspaper reports of divorce court proceedings and kindred cases in which intimate and rather objectionable details of private morals -are thrown before the public gaze. The intention of the authors of the Bill is to prevent the innocent man—and woman—in the street from being contaminated by too close an inspection of the “ high life ” so often revealed in the law courts.

The principal clause is worth careful study. It is short, loosely worded, and obscure. Briefly it states that it shall be illegal to publish any indecent matter calculated to injure public morals. Only the names, addresses and descriptions of the parties to the proceedings, a concise statement of the grounds on which the proceedings are brought and resisted, submission of any points of law arising during the proceedings, the decision of the court, the summing up of the judge, the finding of the jury and the judgment of the judge may be published. Anything more may result in a fine of £SOO or imprisonment for three months. In addition, the portions of a - case may be published only if they do not contravene the clause relating to decency. It will be noticed that the Bill, with naive modesty, does not define indecency. The journalist must do that for himself, and if his opinions should not coincide with a magistrate he may find himself languishing in prison. An editor may innocently report a judge’s summing up, and a magistrate may decide that the judge said things likely to injure public morals, and the editor may find himself in gaol. The editor may publish “ a concise statement of the grounds on which the proceedings are brought ” —provided that any magistrate doesn’t subsequently think it indecent—but he may not publish the proceedings in court. Therefore every newspaper in Eng r land may appear one morning saying the Count de Main is suing the countess for divorce because he alleges that she stayed out <?n Brighton beach all night with co-respondent Persnurkus, and, although the countess’s reputation may thereby be damaged for ever, the newspapers would not be allowed to publish all the evidence showing that the allegations were false. They can publish the finding of the court acquitting the countess of immorality, but her reputation would suffer far less if the' public Were given full facts, showing how absurd were the charges. Further, as Mr St John Ervine so trenchantly points out, although nobody is allowed to read the evidence, anyone can. go into court and hear it first hand. The bedroom blinds are drawn but doors are left wide open. Mr Ervine . then draws attention to indecency in other spheres. The above Bill is directed against newspapers. Evidently the worthy authors have entirely overlooked such things as novels, cinemas and plays. Mr Ervine makes, no such omission. Seldom has an English newspaper allowed such candid details of current literature and drama. “ A popular novelist recently published a novel, of which many thousands of copies were sold in a few weeks,” says Mr Ervine, “in which elaborate details are given of the way in which a woman arranges that she shall be seduced. In another novel, published lately, there are minute accounts of seductions” J

Again, he points out, certain widely advertised and circulated sociological books contain unusually intimate accounts of sexual relationship. “ There is a play now being ptobliclv performed in London in which a woman is nearly violated in view of the audience. The curtain descends on the scene in the nick of time. When it rises again, after a night has supposed Jo have passed, the heroine ecstatically tells her guests that she has been ravished.” Mr Ervine, although he naturally refuses to give the play a free advertisement, is no doubt referring to “ Scotch Mist ” by tlje Attorney-General in the late Labour Government, Sir Patrick Hastings. “In another play performed in the same theatre some months ago, the audience saw a boy seduced by a mid-dle-aged woman. The chief situation in a third and very popular play done in the West End was one in which one of the principal women and one of the principal men were caught in the act in a conservatory. Perverts are now quite commonly and openly introduced into plays and novels. In all of them sexual acts and irregularities are lyrically described. The very medical books are now written like romances. These textbooks and novels and plays are written with some deliberation. There cannot be any pretence by their authors that they were hastily done, or that thev were published before the authors had time to consider what they were doing. This bill does not propose to interfere with them in any way. The girl whom it prevents from reading the prosaically recorded evidence given in a divorce suit may buy as many books as she can afford in which sexual acts are intimately described and even glorified.’’ • Mr Ervine spares neither the modesty nor blushes of his fair readers.

“She may stand in queues until she is footsore to see plays in which ladies describe the glorious maltreatment thev have just enjoyed at the hands of ravenous sheiks, or boys of eighteen are lured by women more than twice their age.”

The law does not object. But with a newspaper, where everything is done at a breakneck speed, with no time to inquire into legal subtleties, the law proposes to come down with a heavy hand. “ Sub-editors who receive the copy from the courts as it comes in are soberminded men who have homes and children of their own, and are, therefore, as reluctant as most people Are to print anything likely to injure public morals.” Mr Ervine continues.

“ There is no newspaper in this coun,try which deliberately glorifies acts and scenes which are generally considered to be immoral. The same cannot be said of some novels and some plays. I doubt if there is any newspaper which reports divorce proceedings in a way that would injure the public morals or cause public mischief, but I know there are novels and plays which do both. Yet it is the newspapers that selected for this forcible restraint and not the novelists or dramatists or the medicosociologists. It is surely common sense to say that divorce cases shall either be adequately reported or not reported "at all. The administration of a difficult law should not be left to the whimsical discretion of magistrates.” The “ Daily Mail,” in a leading article on the same day, declared that it had always been prepared to accept a law which prohibited the publication of an\thing in divorce cases except the name?, addresses and descriptions of the parties and the judgment. But the “ Daily Mail,” in cotrimon with all other newspapers and fairminded people, strongly objects to a bill that leaves so much to discretion and personal opinion, and so bristles with absurdities and inconsistency. It is to be hoped that the House of Commons will study the bill more carefully than the Lords and the Bench of Bishops, who appear to be among its chief sponsors. .