of this paper, we are all too careless of the quality of the stuff that
reaches the eyes and ears of our children. It is not that the stuff is
knowledge, but that it is knowledge in the basest and vulgarest
colourings, knowledge without the antiseptic quality of heroic
interpretation, debased, suggestive, diseased and contagious knowledge.

How the sexual consciousness of a great proportion of our young people
is being awakened, the curious reader may see for himself if he will
expend a few pennies weekly for a month or so upon the halfpenny or
penny "comic" papers which are bought so eagerly by boys. They begin
upon the facts of sex as affairs of nodding and winking, of artful
innuendo and scuffles in the dark. The earnest efforts of Broadbeam's
minor kindred to knock the nonsense out of even younger people may be
heard at almost any pantomime. The Lord Chamberlain's attempts to stem
the tide amaze the English Judges. No scheme for making the best of
human lives can ignore this system of influences.

What could be done in a sanely ordered state to suppress this sort of
thing?

There immediately arises the question whether we are to limit art and
literature to the sphere permissible to the growing youth and "young
person." So far as shop windows, bookstalls, and hoardings go, so far
as all general publicity goes, I would submit the answer is Yes. I am
on the side of the Puritans here, unhesitatingly. But our adults must
not walk in mental leading strings, and were this world an adult world
I doubt if there is anything I would not regard as fit to print and
publish. But cannot we contrive that our adult literature shall be as
free as air while the literature and art of the young is sanely
expurgated?