CENSORSHIP ONCE MORE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1497, 20 July 1912, Page 9

CENSORSHIP ONCE MORE.

In Canada, as a correspondent'lies recently been reminding readers of tho ■'Publishers' Circular," there is a very real office of censorship upon imported books"exercised-by the Customs Denartiiient. The authorities furnish the'officials at tho various ports witli lists of works of which they do not approve, and the officials have .power to refuse thorn admission. Now, if the Canadians wish to have, books sifted for them in this way it is no business of ours, but it (locs look like lnyinga very delicate-task upon men who have not ueee-sarily anv com-petence-for it. The truth is, it "is not every Tom, Dick, or Harry, nor even your better-trained Thomas, Richard,- or Henry who is necessarily qualified to decide whether a book is simply foul or is a serious work in art. or morals. There needs a trained aptitude. Tha theory that, "common sense" is all that is'iiaccssnry -is a common one, and that heresy underlies the contention that, just as an accused man, an accused book- should have the advantage of a trial by jury. Would it be an advantage? For deciding upon a broad question of right' and wrong, a jury is an admirable expedient. That first one ■expert'should rise up and say all "lie can en one side of a finest ion, and then that α-nother should rise and say all he ran upon the other, and that, thereafter the solution should be appealed not to an expert more expert still, but to-a bodv of men who may bo held to represent "perfrclly instructed public opinion is admirable. • But in pronouncing upon a book there must be: taken into consideration questions of art mid tendency with which the average juryman has no" conversance Moreover, the jury would hear mere extracts' and those delivered by an elocutionist, rjie delivery is an element that cannot be left out of account. Those who nave watched popular assemblies knowhow much may .bo taken out of words or put into them by a skilful reader. Sheridan.said that.he could declaim the alphabet in Mich a way as to' make people laugh mid.cry. No doubt,with'a littlo practice-', he ..could have declaimed-it so as,to overwhelm with blushes even a jury ot matrons—a great achievement. They would condemn the alphabet not as.bein'» <w I "Rniora!," but as, .worse than that, infinitely suggestive." 'The question is. sometimes asked whether authors are good men of business ana the answer probably is that they are as good men of business as other people. They or their representatives do make mistakes, however. Thus on may sell his rights for the British Empire ti a London publisher and his American and Canadian rights to an American house, with tlio- result that■ two competing editions each copyright, are put upon'the'Cana-dian-market., There have been of this sort recently, end although tho publisher* have besn able to come to, an amicable settlement without bringing the matter into Court one of the two must be n. loser. Evidently the root cf tho trouble is.that someone has sold the sums thing twice over. •