s mandarin head may in its absurd
unconsciousness strike down at any time the spirit of an honest, of an
artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.

This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western
Barbarian and provided by the State with the immortal Mr. Stiggins's plug
hat and umbrella, is with us. It is an office. An office of trust. And
from time to time there is found an official to fill it. He is a public
man. The least prominent of public men, the most unobtrusive, the most
obscure if not the most modest.

But however obscure, a public man may be told the truth if only once in
his life. His office flourishes in the shade; not in the rustic shade
beloved of the violet but in the muddled twilight of mind, where tyranny
of every sort flourishes. Its holder need not have either brain or
heart, no sight, no taste, no imagination, not even bowels of compassion.
He needs not these things. He has power. He can kill thought, and
incidentally truth, and incidentally beauty, providing they seek to live
in a dramatic form. He can do it, without seeing, without understanding,
without feeling anything; out of mere stupid suspicion, as an
irresponsible Roman Caesar could kill a senator. He can do that and
there is no one to say him nay. He may call his cook (Moliere used to do
that) from below and give her five acts to judge every morning as a
matter of constant practice and still remain the unquestioned destroyer
of men's honest work. He may have a glass too much. This accident has
happened to persons of unimpeachable morality--to gentlemen. He may
suffer from spells of imbecility like Clodius. He may . . . what might
he not do! I tell you he is the Caesar of the dramatic world. There has
been since the Roman Principate nothing in the way of irresponsible power
to compare with the office of the Censor of Plays.

Looked at in this way it has some grandeur, something colossal in the
odious and the absurd. This figure in whose power it is to suppress an
intellectual conception--to kill thought (a dream for a mad brain, my
masters!)--seems designed in a spirit of bitter comedy to bring out the
greatness of a Philistine's conceit and his moral cowardice.

But this is England in the twentieth century, and one wonders that there
can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter
for meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion
in the serenity of my hea