DUNG-MONGERING SIR,—In your number of August 2, Strix 'likens me
to the -late and unlamented Dr. Goebbels. That gentleman, among other unlovely habits, was prone to quote sentences out of context and then abuse those with whom he disagreed.
Strix abuses my 'inelegant tirade' for referring to 'the BBC as a "spiritual sewer" purveying to the public a "diet of dung." ' In the course of a long speech, the words I used were as follows: 'From some programmes of the BBC a spiritual sewer flows out into the homes of the nation. . •. It is
time that decent men and women resigned .from the Governorships of the BBC in protest if this sort of diet of dung continues to be served to the people.'
Apart from his desire to throw mud at me, Strix may mean to suggest, by calling me Goebbels-esqUe, that I advocate censorship of radio and TV pro- grammes as Nazis did and Communists do. The opposite is the truth. I desire fuller liberty of public expression. For this reason, I would like to end the censorship which, in fact, and at present, exists over much of the cultural and artistic life of our country.
It is wielded by men and women, some faceless, some with their faces only too well-known, who hate traditional morality and who use their intel-
lectual and social influence to hinder ideas except the cynical, the sexual and the cheap from being given to the mass of the people. I wish to end this censorship, not for puritanical reasons (though I do not myself think that because something is dirty it is therefore clever and desirable), but because I
am sure that this sort of demoralisation, if it is allowed to continue unchecked, will in the end destroy our liberties.
. Freedom, challenged today from so many quar- ters, can only live on earth if it rests on moral
foundations. A nation which permits its belief in right and wrong to be watered down and washed away sooner or later will find itself in the power of men who say oppression and suppression are right if they deem these things best for us all. The demoralisation of free men is the breeding bed of tyranny.
PETER HOWARD, Hill Farm, Brent Eleigh, Sudhury, Suffolk
[Strix writes: 'Quotation in extenso of Mr. Howard's tirade suggests that "inelegant" was not an over-harsh epithet to apply to it; and as long as he continues to use imagery on which Dr. Goebbels, alone of the orators of our time, exten- sively relied he has only himself to blame if critics note a stylistic affinity. I fail, incidentally, to see why a man who publicly expresses, in intemperate language, extreme views on a subject of general in- terest should automatically attribute any adverse comment on his performance to "a desire to throw mud at him." '--Editor, Spectator.]
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