The Latest Crusade

Irish Review (Dublin)

The Latest CrusadeAuthor(s): Frederick RyanSource: The Irish Review (Dublin), Vol. 1, No. 11 (Jan., 1912), pp. 521-526Published by: Irish Review (Dublin)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30062780 .

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THE

IRISH REVIEW aM ONTIiLY JMAGAZINE OF IRISH

LITERATURE, f4RT & SCIENCE

JANUARY, 1912

The Latest Crusade

By FREDERICK RfAN

THE "crusade" that has recently been proclaimed in Dublin, and has spread throughout the country, against so-called "immoral literature " is an interesting example

of the modern "purity" campaign, and is worth examining because of the evidence it affords of a serious social and political risk in the future. It is not without good cause that those who value intellectual liberty look with grave suspicion and

misgiving on this movement, in which sincerity, hypocrisy, public spirit and scurrility are combined and directed by those who openly proclaim their desire to ban the ideas they dislike. An attempt to establish an intellectual censorship masquerades as a campaign for cleanliness, and those who criticise the

censorship, however sincere and public-spirited they be, are

sought to be branded as supporters of indecency by some of the

organs of the campaign, themselves amongst the most vulgar and'degraded periodicals in the country.

This movement appears to have had its origin in a lecture delivered by Canon Barry at the Conference of the Catholic Truth Society in Dublin, in which he bewailed the " evils " of modern literature. Canon Barry seemed to point chiefly at immoral and licentious novels and objectionable post-cards.

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From this there was started a campaign against certain English Sunday newspapers imported into Ireland. Now no serious person can well be concerned to defend the bulk of the Sunday newspapers; they are assuredly trivial and worthless enough. Though it is characteristic of the methods of the campaign that the two journals most directly attacked, Reynolds' Newspaper and the Sunday Chronicle, are precisely the most readable of the number, both having been frequently contributed to by repre- sentative Irishmen like Mr. John Redmond, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Stephen Gwynn, and Mr. T. M. Kettle. The best, however, that can be said for the average Sunday newspaper is that it is brighter than the average Irish newspaper, and, on the whole, quite as "clean," whilst it is immeasurably superior to the special watch-dogs of " purity " in the Irish press.

If, however, all that was desired was the exclusion of-divorce reports and murder trials the case would be simple, though one might feel that very little harm was done by these compared, say, with the betting evil and the facilities for its encouragement afforded by almost every Irish newspaper without distinction. Still, there is a great deal to be said, as was advocated by various witnesses before the recent Divorce Commission, for suppressing divorce reports altogether, merely publishing the results. The details of lurid murders, robberies, and the like are on a similar

footing. These sensational trivialities are the stock-in-trade of the modern cheap press. But, indeed, there is a tendency absurdly to exaggerate their mischief. From Dumas to Edgar Allan Poe, and from Poe to Conan Doyle, tales of crime and its detection have exercised a strange fascination. Shakespeare himself has made murder, adultery, jealousy, and lust the object of his inimitable art. The abnormal in human nature is interesting just because it is abnormal, and it is rather far-fetched to suggest that those who read an account in a virtuous Irish

newspaper of a moonlighting affair in Galway or Clare are tempted thereby to stalk their private enemies in Grafton Street or College Green.

A much deeper and more sinister motive, however, actuates 522



THE LATEST CRUSADE

the real directors of the present crusade than the mere exclusion of reports of divorce cases and criminal happenings. It is significant that at Canon Barry's Dublin lecture the chair was occupied by Cardinal Logue. Now it was Cardinal Logue who, four or five years ago, sought to suppress the Irish Peasant, then published at Navan, by bringing pressure to bear on its pro- prietors. The Irish Peasant did not publish divorce reports or details of murder cases, or anything of a similar kind. On the contrary, it was then edited by a particularly high-minded and sincere journalist, a keen Gaelic Leaguer and Nationalist, Mr. W. P. Ryan. The offence of the Irish Peasant was that it had advocated some sort of popular control of primary education in Ireland. That and nothing more. Yet Cardinal Logue en- deavoured to silence it, and his ultimate failure was not due to any remissness on his part but to the resistance and self-sacrifice of many courageous opponents of such clerical tyranny. With this case before us it is clear that no one can trust Cardinal Logue and his friends not to misuse any power they may now obtain to suppress newspapers. Their record is against them. But it is not merely their record, it is their present declarations that are against them. At one of the first meetings of the Dublin Vigilance Committee a Father M'Enerney made a very illuminating speech. In the course of his remarks he said :-

" They were not confined to Sunday papers; they wished to stop the evil in the evening papers, which were full of rottenness. Should they confine themselves to newspapers only? A great many people read these things in the newspapers because their strength had been sapped by low periodicals and novels. Then, were they to confine themselves to matters of purity? Were they to take no notice of newspapers which sapped the foundation of society- papers which sapped the Christian feelings of man towards man, which generated hatred between class and class, and which made a hell on earth ? He thought they were just as bad. From that arose a difficulty, that if they brought in people of other creeds they might be members of a rationalistic society who would not go along with them all the way in their object."

It is evident that by papers which generated hatred between class and class Father M'Enerney meant labour newspapers which tended to fill working men with dangerous aspirations

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after better conditions and higher wages ; he did not mean the powerful and wide-spread capitalist press which, whether the workers strike or are locked out by the employers, whether they are trying to improve their own lot or are unselfishly sacrificing themselves to try and improve the lot of fellow-workers, denounces them in the most exasperating terms as enemies of the public weal, and frequently calls for the military to shoot them down. This capitalist press, in the view of minds like Father M'Enerney's, never stirs up class against class. It never abuses trade unions or denounces the working men's leaders. It only preaches in dulcet tones the love of social order to the often sweated victims of social injustice.

Not only, however, would Father M'Enerney, whose speech passed without rebuke, endeavour to suppress labour newspapers, he fears that the mere "purity" label might mislead some Rationalists as to the contents of the phial. With admirable indiscretion he reveals the real mind of the campaigners. Purity without the True Faith is apparently of no avail in this matter, even as you may sow class-hatred with a lavish hand if you but be on the side of wealth and economic privilege.

But it is not merely obscure persons like Father M'Enerney who thus help us to a better understanding of what is planned. Some of the Catholic bishops are already giving us their views as to what the campaign against "immoral literature" means in their eyes. Thus, the Most Rev. Dr. Foley, Bishop of Kildare, preaching in Carlow Cathedral on Sunday, December ioth, having dealt with newspapers and novels, went on to say: "But it is not alone pornographic literature that is flooding the market. Rationalistic literature is also being disseminated with the avowed object of destroying all belief in Christianity, of eradicating from the hearts of the people that faith which is their most precious heritage, and from which spring their most cherished hopes and noblest aspirations. I do not know whether any of these publications has found its way into the town." It is quite clear that if Dr. Foley could prevent it no such publication would find its way into the town. It will be observed

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that Dr. Foley speaks of Rationalists as if they were wilful and heartless destroyers of noble aspirations. But Dr. Foley is not the only sign of the way the wind is blowing. The Most Rev. Dr. Clancy, Bishop of Elphin, addressed a letter to the Chairman of the Local Vigilance Committee for the Suppression of Immoral Literature in Sligo, under date December Ioth, in which there are some interesting passages. "The literature," says Dr. Clancy, " which is calculated to debase and vitiate the public mind of this country is opposed not only to morality but also to dogma. Newspapers imported into this country at the present time are reeking with social heresy. Heresy, as we know, may be an embodiment of principles, not only against revealed doctrine, but also against the ethical principles which govern the relations between labour and capital. Indeed, the great danger of the future will not be a revolt against Faith so much as a revolt against the established order of social and commercial life. In a word, the Christian war cry for the future should be, ' Le Socialisme, voil Il'ennemi.' " So that whilst Dr. Foley would suppress Rationalist literature Dr. Clancy would proscribe Socialism. Perhaps another bishop might like to put the Woman Suffrage movement under a ban. And they link these together in fulminations directed against immoral newspapers ! Nothing more is needed to prove the untrustworthiness of such guides. Their training has unfitted them to discriminate between actual immorality or indecency and any rational dissent from the views which they favour in religion and politics. As Lord Morley has said in a well known essay it has long been the inglorious speciality of the theological school to insist upon moral depravity as an antecedent condition of what they regard as intellectual error. Dr. Clancy's adaptation of Gambetta's famous phrase embodies, indeed, a quaint piece of irony. For it is the French Catholics who have been in recent years amongst the loudest in proclaiming the rights of conscience, liberty of publication, and freedom of teaching. We need not here discuss whether these rights and liberties were ever seriously invaded. The fact remains that no one has laid more stress on them than

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some of the Catholic leaders in France. Yet we have the Irish Catholic bishops proposing precisely to deny that liberty of teaching and publication to their opponents which their French colleagues have so often and so vigorously claimed for themselves.

It is, of course, superfluous at this time of day to

recapitulate the arguments for free speech and free publication. One need not go to the eighteenth century philosophers or men like Mill for these arguments; one need only go, as has been said, to the last Catholic publicist who thinks himself aggrieved by some recent legislation in France or Italy or Portugal. Free- dom of speech is so precious that it is worth while to take

many and serious risks to secure it. Whilst the course of

European history shows that no possible evil of freedom is half so grave as the demonstrated evils of suppression. We know what the mind and the morals of Europe were like when the Church dictated both. The worst licence of the present day is austere virtue itself compared with that lurid age when the Borgias and the Medicis ruled in Rome, and the Papal Monarchy was the centre of the vilest corruption that human annals can show. The case against the censorship is the case against all despotic government. No one is constantly wise enough or good enough or single-minded enough to dictate to the people what they shall or shall not read. Let obscenity and indecency be punished by all means, the ordinary machinery of the law exists for the

purpose. Though even here there have been cases of con- structive indecency in which perfectly serious and public-spirited men have been prosecuted for the entirely legitimate discussion of certain social problems. Beyond the ordinary law, however, every censorship ends like the present one in the minds of Father

M'Enerney and Bishop Foley and Bishop Clancy-it becomes an engine of political or theological tyranny. A nation that would submit to have its reading prescribed for it by self-elected com- mittees of ignorant busybodies, acting under such inspiration as this, would have surrendered a definite and vital safeguard of its moral and political health.

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The Latest Crusade