Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna and Mr. Granville Barker’s Waste may or may not be great poems, or edifying sermons, or important documents, or charming romances:  our tribal citizens know nothing about that and do not want to know anything:  all that they do know is that incest, prostitution, abortion, contagious diseases, and nudity are improper, and that all conversations, or books, or plays in which they are discussed are improper conversations, improper books, improper plays, and should not be allowed.  The Censor may prohibit all such plays with complete certainty that there will be a chorus of “Quite right too” sufficient to drown the protests of the few who know better.  The Achilles heel of the censorship is therefore not the fine plays it has suppressed, but the abominable plays it has licensed:  plays which the Committee itself had to turn the public out of the room and close the doors before it could discuss, and which I myself have found it impossible to expose in the press because no editor of a paper or magazine intended for general family reading could admit into his columns the baldest narration of the stories which the Censor has not only tolerated but expressly certified as fitting for presentation on the stage.  When the Committee ruled out this part of the case it shook the confidence of the authors in its impartiality and its seriousness.  Of course it was not able to enforce its ruling thoroughly.  Plays which were merely lightminded and irresponsible in their viciousness were repeatedly mentioned by Mr Harcourt and others.  But the really detestable plays, which would have damned the censorship beyond all apology or salvation, were never referred to; and the moment Mr Harcourt or anyone else made the Committee uncomfortable by a move in their direction, the ruling was appealed to at once, and the censorship saved.

A COMIC INTERLUDE

It was part of this nervous dislike of the unpleasant part of its business that led to the comic incident of the Committee’s sudden discovery that I had insulted it, and its suspension of its investigation for the purpose of elaborately insulting me back again.  Comic to the lookers-on, that is; for the majority of the Committee made no attempt to conceal the fact that they were wildly angry with me; and I, though my public experience and skill in acting enabled me to maintain an appearance of imperturbable good-humor, was equally furious.  The friction began as follows.

The precedents for the conduct of the Committee were to be found in the proceedings of the Committee of 1892.  That Committee, no doubt recognizing the absurdity of calling on distinguished artists to give their views before it, and then refusing to allow them to state their views except in nervous replies to such questions as it might suit members to put to them, allowed Sir Henry Irving and Sir John Hare to prepare and read written statements, and formally