To me this sort of thing is dull and bespeaks the low state to which our mental activities have fallen. When it comes to the matter of serious letters it is the worst. In New York a literary region of terror has been and is now being attempted. The publisher of Freud’s “Leonardo” is warned before he brings it out that he will be prosecuted—a work that probably has no more defect than that of being intelligent and true. Similarly, Mr. Przybyszewski’s “Homo Sapiens,” a by no means pornographic work, was at once seized on its appearance and the publishers frightened into withdrawing it. This was true of “Hagar Revelly,” “Tess of the d’Urbevilles,” “Sapho,” “Jude the Obscure,” “Rose of Dutchers Cooley,” “A Lady of Quality,” “A Summer in Arcady,” and scores of others. Imagine banning a book like “A Summer in Arcady” from the public libraries! Even “The Sexual Question” by the eminent August Forel has been banned and of course all of Kraft-Ebling (Freud and Ellis are sold only on the written order of a doctor—a mental prescription as it were). Think of it—the work of a scientist of Freud’s attainments!

This sort of interference with serious letters and science is to me the worst and most corrupting form of espionage which is conceivable to the human mind. It plumbs the depths of ignorance and intolerance; if not checked it can and will dam initiative and inspiration at the source. Life, if it is anything at all, is a thing to be observed, studied, interpreted. We cannot know too much about it because as yet we know nothing. It is our one great realm of discovery. The artist, if left to himself, may be safely trusted to observe, synchronize and articulate human knowledge in the most comprehensive form. Human nature will seek and have what it needs, the vice crusaders to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no compulsion on any one to read; one must pay to do so. What is more, one must have taste inherently to select, a brain and a heart to understand. With all these safeguards and a double score of capable critics in every land to praise or blame, what need really is there for a censor, or a dozen of them, each far less fitted than any of the working critics to indulge his personal predilection and opposition, and to appeal to the courts if he is disagreed with?

Personally I rise to protest. I look on this interference with serious art and thought and serious minds as an outrage. I fear for the ultimate intelligence of America, which in all conscience, judged by world standards, is low enough. Now comes a band of wasp-like censors to put the finishing touches on a literature and an art that has struggled all too feebly as it is. Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman and Thoreau, each in turn was the butt and jibe of unintelligent Americans, until by now we are well nigh the laughing-stock of the world. Where is it to end? When will we lay aside our swaddling-clothes, enforced on us by ignorant, impossible puritans and their uneducated followers, and stand up free-thinking men and women? Life is to be learned as much from books and art as from life itself—almost more so, in my judgment. Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. Shall the dull and the self-seeking and the self-advertising close this store on the groping human mind?

THE COURT OF PROGRESS

Editorial Note: The following manuscript, recovered from one of the twenty-seven tombs of Federated Chairmen of the Post Federated Period of World Republics, A.D. 2760-3923, recently discovered in the debris centers of Exomia, Domas and Polos (Central Asia), plainly refers to some annual festival or period of congratulation which, according to the historian, Ruffstuff, who seems to have flourished toward the close of that period when the great Asiatic and American world floods (the shifting of the boundaries of the Pacific) ended the old order, was apparently held, first, at some point in Central South Africa; later in Middle Western North America, as the then continents were called. The author or dramatist, Theobromo, plainly of some period later than that of the Post Federated, when literature of all sorts, owing to the religious viewpoint of the Federation, was non-existent, was plainly familiar with records of this great court or festival, now non-existent. (See mention in closing paragraph of Moline-Emporia-Sedalia sittings, points or places which have not as yet been identified.) The translator, Can. Theodore Dreiser, of Cambo, North Dromio, begs to explain that owing to the peculiar difficulties of the language then used the exact rendition of certain phrases and passages is not guaranteed.

CHARACTERS

NOXUS PODUNKUS: Grand Referendunce Chairman of the Federated Musnud of the World.

SHISHMASH HASH HASH: Master of Ceremonies to the Court of Progress.

Of—Savants—One hundred
Moonshees
Roctor-Proctors
Pundits
Theorists
Seers
Of—
Oracles—One Hundred
Solons
Nestors
Gamaliels
Daniels