LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE " STAR'S " BETTING TIPS.
170 TIER EDITOR OP TER "SrEcTAToR.1 SIR,—I observe with considerable interest that the Spectator has taken to lecturing Messrs. Cadbury and Fry upon the evils of "cant and hypocrisy." I have wondered, in my seven years' reading of the Spectator, how soon a campaign of this kind would begin,—Satan always ends by rebuking sin. But your attacks upon the Cadbury and Fry families give me an opportunity for saying something which I have thought for years. In my honest and conscientious judgment, the Spectator is the most canting paper in England. It repre- sents the vilest section in England,—the licensed immoralist middle class so well exposed in Ludwig Thoma's " Champions of Morality." In seven years the Spectator to my knowledge has never put forward a single noble principle ; it has never supported one noble cause either for honest or dishonest motives,—except in the Silberrad scandal. In the case of oppressed races, the Spectator, with the most offensive hypocrisy, has criticised foreign nations and abused English reformers. President Roosevelt, who has spent one week in Egypt, has found truth ; Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, who has spent a lifetime in Egypt, is ignorant of all Egyptian matters. That is the attitude of the Spectator. I assert that the editor, in conveying such a point of view, is presenting what he knows to be false. The Spectator has opposed every proposal for alleviating the hardships of the poor. A recent article proudly maintained that honest men were quite justified in refusing to employ criminals, the consequence being to rive a one-crime offender into a life of crime. That is a nice ideal to preach! The violent opposition to old- age pensions, combined with your support to Lord Cromer's £50,000 grant (Lord Cromer's last act in Egypt being to order the erection of gallows for men who had not then been tried), shows that the editor is ultra-reactionary, and that worst of men, a toady. The series of slanders on Socialism and Socialists circulated by the "respectable" Spectator have often made me reluctant even to touch the paper. I have to read it as a professional duty,—it is the task which I dislike most in the week. Socialism must have something humane and noble in it, otherwise it would not meet with bitter misrepresentation and deliberate distortion at your hands. The Star and the Daily News try, at any rate, to improve the public mind upcn certain humanitarian and progressive proposals. Humanitarianism stinks in the nostrils of the editor of the Spectator. Every filthy and cruel sport has had the Spectator's unflinching support. Every act of Governmental blackguardism has been upheld by the Spectator, its only regret being that eight people could not be hanged instead of four (Denshawai, &c., &c.) In its denuncia- tions of Indian anarchism, not a syllable has appeared to hint that anarchism may be caused by oppression. Mr. Frederic Mackarness's pamphlet on Indian police torture has been ignored in your columns. Letters are continually suppressed *hich may happen to contain inconvenient facts. The whole paper is one mass of sham and deceit. The Spectator repre- sents every degraded interest in human life. "A New Way of Life" was a subtle appeal to selfishness. The Spectator is suspicious of any proposal of new taxation, lest the pockets of its readers should be hit. In reality, it urges the claims of every interest except that of humanity. It prefers cruelty to mercy, lying to truth, dishonour to honour, fraud to honesty, a system which encourages the " white slave traffic " to the economic freedom of women,—indeed a damnable catalogue of atrocious principles.—I am, Sir, &c.,
4n Hyde Park Mansions, W. 0. H. NORMAN. P.S.—I have taken a copy of this letter in anticipation of its suppression.
[No comment could do justice to this letter. We have printed it exactly as it reached us, but there are obvious slips in the second and sixth lines, —i.e., "Fry" for " Rowntree." We should be glad if Mr. Norman would give us some examples of the letters which are continually suppressed because they contain inconvenient facts.—ED. Spectator.]
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