CONAN DOYLE

Hokitika Guardian, 26 November 1920, Page 1

CONAN DOYLE

HIS CAMPAIGN IN AUSTRALIA SYDNEY, Hqv. 16.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author and traveller, vigorously proselytising here on behalf of Spiritualism, has got the Australian people keenly interested. Everyone is discussing Spiritualism. Is it simply charlatanism and fanaticism, as the majority of people suppose; or is there something in it? New Zealand will start the same argument very shortly, for the lecturer is headed for New Zealand, where, in two or three weeks’ time, he will commence a whirlwind campaign. He will come back to Sydney then, and go on to Queensland to attack the citadels of unbelief. The Australian people wanted to lionise Sir Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes—the writer of the most fascinating of all detective stories. But he would have none of it. Ho told the interviewers who lnmed round him that ‘Sherlock Holmes was dead—thrown over a cliff—defunct,” and talked of his mission, which was to spread the glad news of Spiritualism. The interviewers kept him at Sherlock Holmes, and he talked very reluctantly about his literary triumphs—just as a man would of some shameful bit of his past life. He kept harking back to Spiritualism, and the interviewers kept heading him back to the more interest-

ing subjects. Sir Conan is most passionately in earnest. He declares that be will devote the remainder of his life to spreading the news of the new religion. It is almost a complete obsession with hini. Lady Doyle, who accompanies him, is an even more ardent teacher of the new cult.

The distinguished man is meeting mccli hostile criticism.. Every clergyman who sticks to orthodox ways and thoughts finds in him a fine subject on which to cut loose, and the ears of churchgoers have been tickled lately with some fiery sermons. Some Sir Conan replies to, some he ignores, and some lie chuckles oyer. But, generally, it is war between the leaders of Spiritualism and the churchmen—although the former insist that they are simply carrying on the work of Christianity from a point where it completely and disastrously stopped.