Les mains des enfants
Far too much fuss is made about prurient novels. Not hale enough fuss is made about books of strip cartoons which incite the young and illiterate to crime. A person who can ploug his way through a long and sexy novel, or who can read Boccaccio and Rabelais, is not likely to tie a child to a tree and beat it with chains as some small boys were found doing recently in London. I have a friend who works in East Londoa who found a paper-bound book of strip cartoons, printed its America and republished here, on a seven-year-old child whq was on remand. Every story in the book was in favour a criminals, and crime came out on top. One showed a little girl whose parents quarrelled and who wanted to go and live with her auntie. The mother's lover arrived and the child heard them plotting. The father returned and was shot. The last cartoons were as follows. First mummy was electrocuted, She went first, because she was a lady,' and there was a picture of the event underneath. Then mummy's boy friend via electrocuted. And wasn't I glad, because then I was able tO go and live with auntie.' The final picture showed the litd girl giving an enormous wink and saying, And nobody foun out that it was I who shot daddy.' This story did not equ in horror one called The Beating.' The book was shown tg the Home Office, but no prosecution is possible because it is not pornography.
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