The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-11-26

From the Louisville Courier-Journal.
HHE growing salacity of novels, and
the theatre-or rather the theatres
patrons. since plays are made to fit
public demand-evokes fro ma writer for
the New York Post the statement that
We are having a sex wave which is mere
ly recurrence.
q We haven't new wisdom. and a finer
perception of the folly of prudery, as
some ardent advocates of calling a spade
spade and discussing spades exclusive
ly would have us believe. The sex novel
and play are. like the hobble skirt and the
Latin Quarter hat, merely creatures of
fashion. And fashion, as every one
knows, is a merry-go-round and not
march in any direction.
Says the Post:
''In 1863 was published in France The
Letters of a Portuguese Nun and in
1910 the Zayde' of Madame Lafayette
These works are pure--though scarcely
virginibus puerisque. But only he who
has perused the novels produced between
1850 and 1900 by authors long forgotten
(but now being exhumed in European re-
Prints can evaluate the flood of 'realis-
tic fiction which next burst forth. Mari
tai problems came first-for the enlght-
enment of the innocent, but from pens
far removed from the delicacy of that
which had indited the 'Princesse de
Cleves' BY 1890 the problem novel was
fidelity followed hard upon the theme
of marital martyrdom. BY 1710 normal
material-if marital inddelity be neces-
sarily normal-had yielded to abnormal
studies; and in both France and Eng
land memoirs, diaries, secret histories.
confessions paved the way for the
matchless depictions of perversities and
anomalies by the brilliant Cr-, the
shameless de s., and the analytic Br-.
That the literature Influenced life is an
open secret to the alienist.'
The Posts contributor brings his read
ers through the publication of French lit
erature after the incarceration of no
torious writer by order of Napoleon, and
through the filth of the Post-Balzacian
period which reached a climax in the dis
gusting pandering of Rachilde to the de-
generate taste of the day.
Having drawn the parallel he asks If
1t is morbid to believe that we shall pay
a penalty for the degradation of litera-
ture as Berlin and Paris, in his opin-
ion are already paying it.
Problems of cause and effect are al
ways interesting rather than solvable.
Whether the literature of the eighteenth
century in France produced, or was pro-
duced by, the condition attributed to its
effect; whether the more recent flood OF
unclean literature produced, or was pro-
duced by, conditions at the time it -four
ished are matters upon which honest per-
sons might honestly disagree. If Paris
and Berlin are now showing the effects
of the popularity of an immoral point OF
view have their books and plays made
them as they are, or have the books
and plays been made for them because
they are as they are?
Becoming perturbed about the drift OF
the play and the novel is at best futile.
Every protest entered is advertise
ment. gratis for an author. Thousands
of persons who are not habitual play
goers or novel readers hear first of filth
through denunciation of it sufficiently
heated to attract attention. The drunk
ard never fails to find whisky. The
habitual deliver in unclean literature can
always find what he or she is looking for
The normal minded are content with more
wholesome offerings, but curiosity Is nor
NAL. and when a book or play is de-
clared by someone to be shockingly in
decent and defended by someone as being
a great moral lesson, served la mode
with appetizing sauces, the normal minded
are quite likely to make personal investi-
cation. Herein lies the harvest OF gold
for the deliberate caterer to curiosity.
The drift of fiction is as uncomfortable as
the ebbing and flowing of the tide. De-
cadence in literature and decadence in
morals go hand in land. This is true,
however. only in a degree. Readers are
never, or at least rarely, as bad as
their favorite fiction. just as they are
never, or rarely, as good as their heroes
and heroines are when the pendulum has
swung from pornography to purity.
When the smirched heroine Is in style
her airs and graces, if she is mere gay