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Compton Mackenzie
ALETTER to The Times about the recent prosecutions of books for obscenity, signed by Lord Russell, Harold Nicolson, J. B. Priestley, H. E. Bates, W. S. Maugham, Philip Gibbs and myself, has upset the Sunday School Chronicle. After admitting that horror comics are a grave Menace to the rising generation it does not suggest that the publishers and sellers of them should be prosecuted but that, 4 as most of the objectionable material seems to come from America a useful first step might be for the Government to forbid the use of currency to import it.' Having thus naïvely 'disposed of one threat to Sunday school scholars, the Sunday chool Chronicle goes on ,to find ' quite as disturbing the revalence of pornographic or near-pornograph (sic) literature Ott b jetehtieo,nta snbrkee, iptg and even more p doisigituiedtliii are h this oba jreettioemostr= iterature by legal processes.'
The Sunday School Chronicle deplores a slighting reference to the blue-pencilling police, sergeant whom it considers ' a sounder judge on moral issue ' than some of the signatories to that letter. Other correspondents of The Times have been expressing their confidence in the ability of an ordinary jury to judge whether a novel, ought or ought not to be published; one even went so far as to ask in amazement if a more'level- headed correspondent than hiMself was venturing to suggest that a judge or a jury could be priejudiced.
We may acquit either of being prejudiced over matters of fact, but it demands a credulity bordering upon fatuity to believe that neither can be prejudiced over matters of opinion. A Scottish judge once laid down the distinction when he observed that maternity was a matter of fact and paternity a matter of opinion.
I have not read any of thb three novels the publishers of which have been prosecuted recently, but it is reasonable to assume that the alleged obscenity was of the same degree in all of them. Yet in one case the jury gave an acquittal, in another the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and over the third book the jury disagreed. The first book had the benefit of a summing-up that is likely to endure as a classic of judicial commonsense; the second hook lacked this advantage; the third book, is still sub judice. Whether literature would have suffered a loss by the suppression of any of these novels is not a matter on which the average jury is qualified to express an opinion, nor with all respect to the man in the street and to the woman in the house is an average jury qualified to say whether a book is capable of corrupting or depraving another man in the street or another woman in the house. The effect on adolescents is beside the point because it must be presumed that parents who buy such novels from booksellers or borrow them from libraries are capable of guarding the morals of their adolescent young. And how many adolescents make a habit of reading the latest novel from the circulating library to instruct themselves in the mysteries of sex ? A minute percentage, so minute indeed that it is not worth while prosecuting respectable publishers for the sake of a most Improbable threat to the innocence of youth. .
And why is it always novels which are chosen as the objects of puritan attack ? - Novelists might feel more sure of the sincerity of this crusade if salacious books masquerading as serious efforts to instruct the ignorant about sex were occasionally prosecuted or if one newspaper' had ever been proceeded against for reporting sexual offences. I once heard the late Lord Riddell at a public lunch beg novelists to keep their works clean, which must be the finest example on record of a very big pot calling a comparatively small kettle black.
Let me hasten to add that the Press today compared with the Press of fifty or sixty years ago is as white as the linen washed by one of the detergents that advertise in it to prodigally. Once 'upon a time the daily newspaper wilt Father's paper and therefore he was given an opportunity to read all the details of an unsavoury case, for it was held to be Father's duty to keep his paper out of reach of the family. Then the Daily Mail arrived and Father's paper did not belong to Father any more but became the property of his family. Gradually the rest of the newspapers had to realise their responsibility to the decency of home life. Yet with all the opportunities that the Press once afforded for corrupting and depraving my own youth I do not believe I suffered the slightest moral damage. Youth used to read from curiosity' what it could find out about sex and the healthier attitude of today has assuaged much of that curiosity by allowing a frankness, that would have horrified the parents of sixty years ago, • The puritan fear of sex is usually inspired by an unhealthy awareness of its power over the individual' puritan himielf. 'He at once jumps to' the conclusion that everybody else must be affected like him, and being shocked by his own reactions he feels it to be his duty -to .proiect others against such temptation. .
Do not let us tolerate the argument,' says the Sunday School 'Chronicle, ' that a good way of getting, rid of unwholesome literature is to remove legal restraints.'
None. of the signatories to that letter desires to allow a free circulation for bawdy 'bOOks: 'written With the obvious intention of appealing only to self-indulgent bawdiness. When such works ate prosecuted nobody, not even counsel for the defence attempts to argue that they are not bawdy. Counsel for the defence searches for mitigating circumstances to make the best of a bad job.
What we fear is that these recent cases will promote such a state of nervous anxiety among publishers that works of integrity will remain unpublished because a prejudiced jury' guided by a determined judge will declare them to be obscene. We should view the suppression of horror comics' with perhaps even more enthusiasm than the Sunday School Chronicle, at the same time protesting that it is not our job to secure the suppression of such a form of youthful entertain- ment, because we feel sure that the National Sunday School Union Council is much better equipped to deal with such a menace to the moral health of their young charges than we are. What we have a right to resent is an attempt by Sunday School officials to dictate what books written for adult entertainment are to be suppressed in case their young charges should contrive to get hold of them. I do not think that the young people of today are any more interested in contemporary novels than they ever were. I was listening the other evening on the radio to one of those competitive quizzes between a girls' school and a boys' school. What,' the boys were asked, ` do you associate with the names Graham Greene, Hammond Innes and Nigel Balchin ? ' Cricket ', a fourteen-year-old boy replied confidently.
The traveller who. was asked the other day by a customs officer if he had any pornographic literature in his luggage replied indignantly that he did not possess a pornograph. There seems to have been a lavish issue of pornographs to the police recently. 'Perhaps I should not have, put that sic in brackets against near-pornograph ' in the quotation from the Sunday School Chronicle. Perhaps it really does possess a pornograph.
A book need not be obscene throughout, any more than a poisoned drink need to be compounded exclusively of poison, to do its evil work,' says the Sunday School Chronicle. A pornograph would save the censorious reader from wasting his time reading the respectable pages of an obscene libel.
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