Obscenity and the Law
After a retirement of five hours on October 18 the jury in the ease of The Image and the Search failed to agree upon a verdict, and Messrs. Heinemann the publishers, and Mr. Walter Baxter the author, face a fresh trial on the charge of publishing an obscene libel. No comment can therefore be made upon this case. But it is proper to extend sympathy to the discharged jury, whose inability to agree represents the confusion into which public opinion has been thrown by two other recent verdicts. In the case of The Philanderer Messrs. Seeker and Warburg were found Not Guilty upon the same charge, after a summing up by Mr. Justice Stable which is already classic, and which represents the liberal and humane view of the standards of taste of the mid-twentieth century. In the other recent case of September in Quinze the Recorder of London summed up iw very different language, and the defendants were heavily fined. The results of these two verdicts have been to create a profound uncertainty and con.* fusion among publishers. In some quarters indeed there ia a feeling almost of panic. If this feeling were confined to the handful of disreputable fly-by-nights there would be no occasion for anything but approval. But it is not. It is the directors of old-established firms of unimpeachable reputation who are anxiously thumbing through the manuscripts of established writers in the fear that some delineation of lust (described perhaps, only to illustrate its evil consequences), some unguarded reference to the facts of life, some touches of Rabelaisian humour, will involve a prosecution. This is a very, undesirable state of affairs, and it is much to be hoped that responsible bodies such as the Publishers' Association and the Authors' Society will devote themselves to the-4 admittedly very difficult—task of devising some proposals which would put an end to it.
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