DEMORALISING BOOKS.—THE MEDICAL POINT OF VIEW.
tTo THE EMTOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Will you allow me, as a member of the medical pro- fession, to thank you for the admirably expressed protest against a demoralising book which you made in a recent issue of the Spectator ? Doctors know as a matter of practical experience that books which tend to undermine, by either subtle or frank suggestion, the sense of the need or the duty of self-control constitute a real danger for the community and the individual,—and that not only in the case of the young. There are literary people who seem to divide mankind into two classes, la jeune fille and the rest. For them la jeune fills is " the" bête noire, for she interferes with the unrestrained liberty—more rightly called license—of literature. In a recent notice of a French story the critic points out that the author does not pander (mark the word) to the present "absurd French craze for books which can be read aloud in the family circle." If a literary expert is giving his opinion of a really unspeakably filthy French book, he will probably begin by saying : " This is not a book pour la jeune fille." You, Sir, will do a great service both to literature and morality—or shall we say common decency P—if you will give expression to the protests of adult men and women who object to the circulation of books of a certain class in this country for their own sakes. They consider that sewage should be kept out of sight, and indeed they regard sewage as a natural, inevitable, and utilisable thing,—nay, as innocuous compared with the filthy book. I beg the thoughtful men among your readers to ask themselves how far things must have gone if a doctor thinks it necessary, and is permitted by the editor to assert, that every novel or poem which deals, whether in veiled or open fashion, with ,r)is sapa (p6ols xpilau ought to be summarily suppressed, in whatever language it may be written, and without regard to the plea that it may act as a deterrent. It is intolerable that an adroit advocate should be able by mere verbal jugglery to save such vile stuff from the fate it deserves ; it is intolerable that the efforts of the police (I wish to express my admiration for the
work they are doing) should be sometimes baffled because everything depends upon the definition of a single word. We need, and some day we shall have, a separate Department of Moral Hygiene under the oontrol of the Medical Officer of Health of the Privy CounciL Such a Department will find work enough and to spare in the way of prevention and suppression, and it will do it without interfering with that which would be called " literature " by any sane man.—I am,
[Our correspondent is not speaking of books which are merely coarse, but specially of those which deal with various forms of sexual depravity. On such enormities it is most fit that the medical profession should speak out.— En. Spectator.]
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