rubbish of mine when they will not pay four-and-sixpence for this
book because everyone else can get it for four-and-sixpence too.


THE TIMES TO THE RESCUE

The day after the refusal of the Committee to face my statement,
I transferred the scene of action to the columns of The Times,
which did yeoman's service to the public on this, as on many
other occasions, by treating the question as a public one without
the least regard to the supposed susceptibilities of the Court on
the one side, or the avowed prejudices of the Free Churches or
the interests of the managers or theatrical speculators on the
other. The Times published the summarized conclusions of my
statement, and gave me an opportunity of saying as much as it was
then advisable to say of what had occurred. For it must be
remembered that, however impatient and contemptuous I might feel
of the intellectual cowardice shewn by the majority of the
Committee face to face with myself, it was none the less
necessary to keep up its prestige in every possible way, not only
for the sake of the dignity and importance of the matter with
which it had to deal, and in the hope that the treatment of
subsequent witnesses and the final report might make amends for a
feeble beginning, but also out of respect and consideration for
the minority. For it is fair to say that the majority was never
more than a bare majority, and that the worst thing the Committee
did--the exclusion of references to particular plays--was
perpetrated in the absence of the Chairman.

I, therefore, had to treat the Committee in The Times very much