IRISH CENSORSHIP

Evening Star, Issue 20133, 25 March 1929, Page 7

IRISH CENSORSHIP

A POET’S CRITICISM The Irish Censorship Bill is_ based upon a report by an Evil Literature Commission, mates the London correspondent of the Melbourne ‘ Argus.’ A censorship board will be set up consisting of five persons appointed by the Minister of Justice. A majority of four can prohibit the importation or sale of any book regarded as indecent or tending to inculcate principles subversive of public morality. Clauses in the ihl! make special reference to sexual literature. The Censorship Board will act upon complaints of certain “recognised associations,” such as the Catholic Truth Society. No private individual can set the law in motion. Certain associations will have the duty ol keeping watch and the right of making representations to the Minister of Justice rhat a book or periodical might to be suppressed. The Minister will refer these to the Board of Censors. The hoard has no power over birth control literature, The executive, through the police, keeping this authority to itself, including the right to search. .Senator W. B. Yeats, the poet, describes the censorship proposals as “ the greatest attack upon liberty of thought made by any West European nation.” He calls them “ a dangerous wound on the Irish intellect” and ‘‘a degradation.” “ Every educated man in Ireland hates the Bill,” be continues. “ 1 (inspect every member of fbe Cabinet hates it. The old regime left Ireland perhaps the worst-educated country in Northern Europe—with some boys leaving school at twelve and some never going at all, and teachers who never opened a book out of school hours. We were helots, and where you have the helot there the zealot reigns unchallenged. Our zealot’s idea of establishing the Kingdom of God upon earth is to make Ireland an island of moral cowards.” Senator Yeats goes on to say that some of the “recognised asso riations ” would like to give legal validity to the whole of the Boman Catholic Index Expurgatorius. “ Already pietists in Galway .have publicly burnt the works of Shaw and Maeterlinck,” he says. “ The section of birth control will allow the police, without reference to the Minister, to seize Shaw’s ‘ The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism.’ The section will also automatically exclude periodicals like ‘ Nature,’ the ‘ New r Statesman,’ and the ‘Spectator.’ ” Mr Yeats, sick of controversy, proposes to leave Dublin for six months and. dwell in Bafiollo, in Italy. In future he will be in Ireland only during the summer. He does not propose to seek re-election to the Senate. “I jam glad to be.out of politics,” he says; “ I’d like to spend my age as a bee, and not as a wasp.”