Censorship Gone Mad

Stupidity Goes Marching Forth In the Name of Morality

Justice John Ford of the Supreme Court of New York, like Polonius, had a daughter. One day, so the story goes, he caught her reading D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love. It is a very long novel, an erudite and obscure novel, and some critics say -- among them H. L. Mencken -- a very dull novel. But unquestionably it has some erotic passages which are intelligible to the sophisticated intelligentsia, Whether they were understood by his daughter or not Justice Ford did not say; whether her mind was corrupted by them he did not try to ascertain. But Justice Ford, being a lawyer and used to the obscure and euphemistic language of legal pleading, understood them and was out raged. Because his daughter might have been shocked by some highly literary but indecent expression, Justice Ford set about outlawing the whole body of literature from the Greek classics to George Moore for everybody, at least in New York State. That was the origin of the Clean Books Campaign wherein the mobilized blue forces of New York are attempting to jam through the legislature the most drastic piece of censorship in American history.

Their legal weapon is the so-called Cotillo-Jesse bill.

This bill provides that any book containing a " lewd, obscene, or filthy word or expression " is liable to get into trouble. The intent of the book is not considered; if from the purest and most moral motives it used an obscene word it comes under the law. The book is not to be judged as a whole but shall be condemned for a single passage out of its context. In one fell stroke this clause would outlaw the Bible, Shakespeare, the Greek and Roman classics, Swift, Chaucer, the whole of Restoration comedy, Milton, Fielding, Voltaire, Flaubert, Goethe, Balzac, the writings of the early Christian fathers, Martin Luther, the Encyclopedia Britannica and the dictionary.

Moreover, another provision of the law forbids the introduction of expert testimony by the defense. That is to say, the Clean Books League and the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who are backing the bill, can not hope for conviction if expert intelligence is brought to bear on a suspect author. They must rely on ignorance and prejudice.

It is a significant fact that not a single author, nor a single publisher, whether of books or magazines, has appeared in favor of the bill.

Surely here is censorship gone mad.