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The answer is simple: the author was within his rights, but the audience should go away. Respect for Death is not the only universal human reaction upon which the incompetent writer may count. Awe in the presence of the supernatural is another; a certain tenderness toward very little children is perhaps another. Then there are of course certain instinctive animal reactions such as sex impulses and the like. The question in each case is not "Has this author the right to use such material?" but "Has he the power?" Is he big enough to be able to contribute anything to his theme? Has he sufficient skill to dress it in the garments that are its right? If he has not, the audience should hiss his affrontery, or go

away.

So my young author may have her way with the dead kittens or the lacerated heart of a child using them without skill and to no purpose, and no one may stop her. But her audience must be clear-sighted enough to see that the shock she causes is due to no skill of her own. On the contrary; a child playing with dynamite may cause more alarm than a man working with it.

If these opinions of mine are sound, one of the conclusions they force upon me is that there is no rightful censorship other than the final judgment of an intelligent audience.

The complaint is often heard among creative writers that stories which plunge us into the deeps of horror, or tear our hearts with the hopeless pathos of child suffering do not easily "find a market." Perhaps it is true that many editors seek safe ruts; perhaps it is a chief failing of their kind that they lack initiative or daring. But there is this to be said for them: their audiences when justly offended or disgusted may hiss or go away, but the writer himself does not immediately suffer from that censorship. His story has already been "accepted"; and whatever he may say about editors in moments of annoyance, he likes to believe that the editorial acceptance in this particular case stood for popular ap

proval. It is the magazine which bears the full brunt of rightful censorship.

An editor's judgment is affected by commercial considerations; that is certainly true. But is that so serious an indictment if the honest pleadings of commerce have had fair hearing in the editor's mind? The immature author cannot sell her kitten story; she tries, but finds a most effective censorship in the way. Years later when greater power is added to her imagination, and breadth to her vision, and skill to her pen, she rewrites it. The facts of her story are the same, but such is the power of it now, that the most conventional-minded editor must get out of its way, believing that it will sway his docile public just as it does him, so perfectly has he come to represent them! Censorship has not failed this time; it has been vindicated.

Disagree with me if you like in this exaltation of the editor; in fact I rather hope that you will, for then you must the more surely agree when I say that I would not substitute for the editorial censorship of any art, "commercial" through it may be, a censorship by two or three political appointees who must substitute their own whims and snap judgments for the right of an audience to hiss or go away.

How weak a vessel is Man! Immediately upon the completion of the above article, the writer meekly submitted it to an Official Censor, watching her furtively as she read. She (emphatically): No "skill with the pen" could ever justify that story of the child and the kitten.

He (severely): How can you know that? A writer with great power might apply it to his own purposes so brilliantly as to justify it; and he would thereby prove his great

ness.

She (with finality): If he was really great he would n't stoop to use it.

He (patronizingly): Read Masefield's introduction to his "Tragedy of Nan." He says that the depiction of intense human suffer

ing furnishes the supreme test of a writer's power, and so is a constant challenge. She: And I have heard you say more than once that he failed in that attempt. You laughed at the deadly meat-pie. He: Well then, my disapproval plays its small part in the final and only rightful censorship of it.

She (still surveying the pages coldly): You say "The final judgment of an intelligent audience." How about unintelligent audiences? How about the harm that some

plays may do in the minds of the immature? He: There is authority for the control of those under-age; they should be kept at home or denied admission. But men's minds cannot make laws to restrain other men's minds.

She: Well, if mature men won't enforce the laws to protect the immature, then mature men ought to suffer some restraints themselves.

He: How beautiful the moon is tonight, over the mountains.

WE

With the Satirists Afield

LITERARY FLICKERS

By VAN BUREN SINCLAIR

WE had gathered for our weekly meeting as was our wont - Talbot, Darby, and I, the three of us; Tompkins made the fourth. Talbot, Darby and I were serious, literary; Tompkins was a nuisance. We had taste, ideals, aspirations; he had his feet on the table.

Triteness of expression had been our topic for discussion in our last meeting, and we had decided that triteness of expression was very — well — very bad. Tompkins had blurted: "Then I suppose because so many people say: 'I'm thirsty,' you would say: "The peculiarly parched condition of my throat makes it advisable for me to seek that form of refreshment" but we had shut him up before he made a fool of himself, for what could Tompkins, with his vulgarity and ignorance, know about writing?

This evening I was reading a magazine story to Talbot and Darby while Tompkins read the sporting page to himself. I had read for some time when some distinctive quality of the story began to impress itself on my consciousness in a way I cannot describe. I paused and cleared my throat.

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covery. Not once

had

not once, I repeat the hero resorted to the conventionality of flicking the ash from his cigarette! There were two more paragraphs.

""And Reginald De Montfloozay,'" I read, ""slowly rose, and nonchalantly-""

I hesitated, choking, but managed to finish, hollowly, "flicked the ash from his cigarette!'"

There was silence - horrible silence. I repeated the words, but still no one spoke. "He FLICKED the ash from his cigarette!" I bellowed, "Do you hear? He-"

Oh, the cruelty! The blighting disappointment of it!

"I think it's a rotten story," I said, as calmly as possible.

"It's crude!" said Talbot.

"It's dastardly!" said Darby.

"Well, what did you want him to do this time?" demanded Tompkins, "Suck the ash off through a straw?"

"I wonder who wrote it," said I, trying to keep my temper.

"Who could have written it?" queried Talbot.

"Who would have written it?" suggested Darby.

"Don't be damned fools," said Tompkins, "I wrote it."

Tompkins is a person with a very trivial mind and flagrantly gross tastes. We flicked him out of the window.

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THE FILMLAND SCREEM

By OVID C. LANE

NEWSPAPER.

(BEING A SUGGESTED "STYLE" FOR A MOVIETOWN Ordinary newspapers, it is to be supposed, are altogether impossible in Movietown. Clawss is what counts there. Something rich y' know, luxurious, like the million dollar fillums. When you pick up a paper there you should read something like the following.)

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Comes a time, into the life of every man, when character is stretched taut on the torture boards of Fate or broken upon the implacable wheels of Chance.

Into such ordeals were two men lately flung and thereby hangs this tale. And, in the telling, let it not be said that Romance is no more; that the thrills, the battles, the bloody strife, upon which depended the very existence of our forefathers, are passed away with them. never to return; that the sordidness of our modern workaday world is unbroken and unrelieved of the frills and fancies, the trials and tests of mental and physical clashes

which come, sometimes, as refreshing ointment to the soul of man.

Lost is the man who hesitates. Yet, let it not be said that in the crucial fires which so lately melted the very soul of our fellow townsman, Bill Juggler, cashier of the First National Bank, that he succumbed to eternal defeat, nor that the staunch and fearless qualities, with which his ancestors were endowed, were found lacking.

Late, on this afternoon of summer, the village of Movietown was stirred with its usual activities. Loungers on the court house lawn, slept; merchants in the stores dozed or fared forth to golf upon the nearby greens while their clerks bustled about preparing for the evening trade; a checker game progressed eternally in the office of the chief of police; across the street from the First National Bank a policeman lounged upon a pool room bar; while, in the bank, the cashier pursued, in a leisurely way, his customary duties.

Not a cloud appeared to dim the horizon. Peace, it would seem, would reign a hundred years. How swiftly, in the spin of a second strange car, in which a stranger rode, was to hand, all this may change! Even then a be seen upon the streets

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ONE MOMENT PLEASE!

If Mr. ERASTUS JOHNSING, bank janitor, is in the city he is advised to call at the office of this newspaper. Anyone knowing of his whereabouts should report to police. He is wanted as a material witness.

(Continued on Page MDCCXCVIII)

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Editorial and Business Offices at 1430 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, Cambridge, Mass. Entered at the Boston Postoffice as Second Class Mail Matter. Subscription postpaid, $3.00 per year; foreign, $3.36. Advertising Rates on Request.

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they profit most the writer who studies them, no matter what his metier. The unmistakable demonstration of the success of co-operative study, criticism, and marketing in advancing the interest of the writer will influence us to emphasize that phase of our editorial policy. For the rest, technique and markets will continue to receive the major emphasis.

Our advertising policy remains unchanged. No advertisements for correspondence schools will be accepted. No "song writer" appeals will be found in these pages. The thousand and one kinds of crooks and quacks who infest the profession will not be recognized. This is not alone to protect our readers from exploitation. Rather, it is to retain the respect of the ever larger-growing group of people who resent an insult to their intelligence in the advertising pages, perhaps more than in the reading pages. Better a little food than much bait.

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