Le petomane
Sir: As one contemplates the advertisement, the appearance of which you have permitted on page 725 of your issue of 8 December, one wonders how much lower we can sink, when what used to be a reputable journal of the first class, dedicated to the serious consideration of the things of the mind, and the spirit, can commit such a solecism.
That commentators of the Sunday Times and the Guardian are permitted to discuss publicly, with apparent approval, such an unmentionable subject, is no excuse for the advertisement and its vulgar picture you are pleased to exhibit. One wonders further what foreigners must think of such an apparently laudatory presentation of what must to them appear as a deterioration in manners. I have no hesitation in refuting and denying that 'gentlemen'—and I would add what are called working-men (for I have had -much to do with, as well as represented them, at times)—are, or ever were, at all interested in, will, or would, enjoy the Presentation in any form of the low and coarse
exhibition of indecency—and one might add, disgusting and offensive physical abnormality— that the advertisement in your pages seeks to popularise. In the classical phrase of one who cer- tainly knew what is, and what is not, permissible: 'We are not amused!'
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