"TIIE GREAT ADULT REVIEW."
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:]
as,—In your issue of July 8th you say that the list of contri- butors published in the English Review (July) constitutes "no proof whatever that the people in the list agree with the English Review or condemn the Spectator. With some further glib remarks about my "strange and inconclusive attempt at a reply," you hint that you have no wish to prolong the controversy. No doubt. I must therefore ask you in common fairness to publish this letter, together with a protest signed by a number of very eminent men of letters dealing specifically with your original attack.
All through the controversy you have evaded the issue, terrified at your own "spook." You set out to do us injury. But finding that your attack did not "go down," you have quibbled about every letter written you on the subject, so seriously in the case of Henry Newbolt's interesting letter that Laurence Binyon wrote to you saying that your claim to stand for freedom while seeking to do everything in your power towards the "suppression of another periodical will seem to most men a hardly ingenuous sophistry." . I must request you to give publicity to the words of Thomas Hardy, who, in a letter to me, writes (and authorizes me to say) that "having read the programme of the English Review, as quoted in the Spectator article, I can see nothing to object to in it in the interests of truth, morals, and honest literature."
• Now let me quote to you the opinion of H. Davray in the Mercure de France. He speaks of your attack upon us as " balourd et filandreux, puant rhypocrisie et le jesuitisme' —I translate the good words : "reeking with hypocrisy and Jesuitism." That is what they think about you in Paris.
I ask you, in my turn, has your conduct been moral ? Has it been English? My dear Sir, has it been adult? The Puritans always fought openly—like gentlemen—at "push of pike." Do you not know that? Any schoolboy in the country could have told you that it was a mistake for the Spectator to play informer to the Liberal Press.
And so this silly business ends with the beginning of the silly season. Once More you have treated literature in the spirit of itn usher. But we have got beyond that to-day. Your editorial " tickle-toby " is a futile weapon.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AUSTIN HARRISON.
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