[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. " ] Sin,—As one who has
always marvelled at the high moral tone maintained in your columns,and was once extolled beyond my deserts by being invited to contribute an article, may I be allowed to protest against your paper on " The Great Adult Review " ? Whilst you blame the English Review for circulat- ing opinions likely to harm the jeune fine, I find that you actually select the most poisonous of those vile utterances and give it the wide publicity of your usually virgin columns ! The English Review circulates, I presume, among those already inoculated, but you deliberately set this "garbage "—the term is your own—before the babes and sucklings who are among your own readers.
There are two points, Sir, which you have forgotten. It has not occurred to you that there are ethical heresies, not shared by you or by other conventional leaders of opinion in the Press, which may nevertheless be genuinely held; and that it is of inestimable value that there should be some organ open to the expression of these views, if only that you and others like you may criticize and contradict them and defeat their influ- ence, instead of casting upon them the obiter dictum, of your displeasure. The second fact which has not occurred to you is that a magazine like the English Review is precisely the sort of magazine which cannot be made to attract light-headed, prurient people ; just as " Molina Vanna " and " Waste " are plays which, though censored, never attract the prurient audiences which go to certain musical comedies.
Personally I admire Mr. Frank Harris's views only less than I admire the odious views of Mr. Wells. Yet, as there are scores of thousands of persons who hold these views inarticu- lately, I myself, if I could attain to your ethical eminence, should rejoice to see them made articulate, in order that I might expose, trounce, and denounce them with all the force of urbane invective which I should doubtless possess if I were a member of your staff.
There are also string literary grounds upon which the English Review has laid itself open to attack. That is another matter.—Allow me, Sir, to remain a constant reader of your [Mr. Scott-James offers no defence to the main contention of our article, that concerned with the statement set forth by the English Review as to why people should read " The Great Adult Review." Those reasons, given by the Review itself, preclude the apology made by Mr. Scott-James. Shelley would not have urged people to read his writings on moral subjects because they were not Bowdlerized, and therefore offered attractive reading to adults !—En. Spectator.]
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