FASCISTS SEE DANGER IN JACK LONDON’S BOOKS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 4 January 1930, Page 13

FASCISTS SEE DANGER IN JACK LONDON’S BOOKS.

The Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Signor Michele Bianchi, has issued a circular to the Prefects of Italy’s ninety-two provinces instructing them to check the excessive sale and diffusion of the works of Russian authors such as Gorki, Gogol, Dostoiew ski, Tolstoi, and Tourguenieff, and of the novels of Jack London, the “ Iron Heel ” being especially mentioned. “ There is no desire,” says the circular, ** to interfere with the legitimate sale of these books at normal prices, whether in bookshops or on bookstalls, but only to check it when contingent circumstances lead to the conviction that the works in qu<flMson are being diffused with tht view Of propagating doctrines in direct contradiction with those in which Fascism intends to educate the new generations. When volumes, well-bound and well-printed are offered at prices which must obviously entail a lops on the seller, there are grounds for well-founded suspicions that the sale Is being undertaken for illicit purposes, and it should therefore be suppressed.”