The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-04-21
sUaeEsrnD crNsoRsHrp.

zines calls attention to what he styles ""The Coming Censorship Of Fiction. He takes the position that there is a constant increase in the output of indecent novels. and that unless the rising tide of prurient fiction Is check ed the government will be compelled to take hand in the suppression of this kind of authorship or at least preventing such books from going through the mails.
 Perhaps this is true but where is the blame for it? Writers of such books do not work for glory or fame or notoriety, but frr money. It seems to be something of a going and com ing proposition. As long as readers want such books they will be written and published, and as long as they are published there will be purchasers of certain type. The public has somewhat confirmed habit of get ting what. it wants and will pay for If no such books were written they would not be read. we may say, but on the other hand if there were no readers for them they would not be written. and thus the problem shifts back and forth.
 But suppose such censorship is established where shall it begin. and where shall 1t end? Shall nothing be condemned and suppressed except the cheap fiction? Or shall the prun- ing-knife be applied to all printed matter that is not clean and decent: If there is to be an impartial weed ing out and suppression of all printed might be found both proper and nec- essary in the interests of fairness and impartiality to strike aS higher game than the dime novel nuisance. If strict and impartial justice should mark the work of the censors some of the time-honored English classics might suffer.
 For these old classics lack very much of being faultless in this res pect Shakespeare's Venus and Ad- onis" is notla work that careful par ents would select for their children to read, and there are many passages in his dramatic works which need to be blue-penciled before being read in the parlor. Edmund Sponsors "Faerie Queen" abounds in indecency all the way through. though Spenser was one of England's great poets and this was one of his greatest works. When we come to Chaucer it is difficult to speak respectfully, though he was an- other English poet of renown. Most of his poems are below the strict end of decency while his Canterbury Tales" exude fifth and foulness from every stanza. We hardly think that any man of judgment and good taste would select that book for family reading. or that it would be selected as a book to read from to a mixed audience
 And So we might go on and desig-. nate other books of famous authors: books to be found in all public li braries and which go through the mails and are sold and distributed without question. Shall the cheap in- decent novels and tales be condemned and suppressed. while the equally foul classics go unquestioned? That doesn't look exactly like a fair deal. as we view 1t.
 It may be argued that these cheap works are more hurtful to the gener- al public than are the productions of the great writers of the past and doubtless that is true to a certain ex tent. Cheap fiction Is more generally bought and read by the general public. especially the young. than are the more expensive and pretentious books, and for that reason, If no other, they are more demoralizing. and ought to be kept out of circulation. The main difficulty we see in the exercise of such censorship would be to know where to draw the line between that which is proper and that which is indecent. It would require a nice sense of jus tica and fairness to distinguish be- tween the two. and perhaps no two readers would agree in all cases Still 1t might be done, and all indecent lit- erature be suppressed. but we insist that if this is to be done some of the English classics will be in great dan ger.
 WHERE WILL IT ENDP