THE CENSORSHIP PLOT
SIR,—While—in common with the vast majority of your readers, I imagine—I must applaud the action recently taken by the Postmaster General of the USA in impound- ing a translation of Aristophancs' Lysistrata, I feel I must draw public attention to a publi- cation that is even more disturbing to people of high moral standards. The book to which I refer is in the possession of nearly every boy in my school. Most editions are bound in innocent-looking plain cloth that quite belies the contents. The book is bulky and is divided into several sections. The title of the first sec- tion—'Genesis'—gives an indication of the subject matter; but the subject matter far exceeds anticipation. If this book should fall into the hands of any of your readers, it will be sufficient for them to look at chapter nine- teen. That is not an isolated case. If any further evidence is required, they should look at the 'Second Book of Samucl'—a sequel to the 'First Book'—in which the writer seems to have been encouraged by the success of his first venture into the unsavoury to reveal his deplorable taste for the sordid and beastly still further. In a much later section we find such outrage to decency as one character calling another a 'whited wall.' When one considers what material was normally used for the con- struction of walls in the country in which the scene is set, this is seen to be equivalent to the vulgarity of Cicero expelling Catiline from Rome with the words 'purga urbem.' Cicero is a writer who is fast disappearing from our schools; but, so long as this book to which I refer is widely read by the rising generation, is it possible to hope that England can remain a nation with any moral fibre at all?—Yours faithfully,
H. O. MULLENS
Headmaster
Lord Williams's Grammar School, Thame, Oxon
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