LITERARY CENSOR.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20477, 1 December 1934, Page 25 (Supplement)

LITERARY CENSOR.

Lawyer to Replace U.S. Customs Men. EXPERT OPINION SOUGHT. QUSTOMS officials are no longer to be the sole censors of foreign literature and works of art entering the United States. It is held that these officials, from the very nature of their routine work, cannot be expected to pass sound judgments on such matters. As a result of repeated criticisms, the Treasury Department has decided that the Customs Bureau shall in future be guided, if not controlled, by the opinions of a literary and art “ expert.” The first appointment to this post is that of Mr Huntington Cairns, a Baltimore lawyer whose book reviews and other articles have shown him, in the past, to be both erudite and liberal in his attitude. He has been officially attached to the office of the Customs collector at Baltimore. The immediate motive for the appointment was not any outstanding dispute about a book or picture, but & controversy over the case of Mrs Ilazel Moore, secretary of the National Committee on Legislation for Birth Control, part of whose luggage, containing birth control literature, was seized when she returned from England recently. Among her books was one printed and widely circulated in the United States which has actually received the approval of certain Roman Catholic leaders here. The matter was taken up with the Customs Bureau by a New York lawyer, Mr Morris Ernst, who was largely responsible for getting Mr James Joyce’s “ Ulysses ” past the United States Customs. It is now expected that the literature taken from Mrs Moore, together with a report on the subject prepared by the New York collector of Customs will be handed over to Mr Cairns for “ expert opinion.”