aby Deslys, whom I, too, have not seen. I made more than one
attempt, but the crush of beauty-lovers was too great.) It is quite
easy to imagine an actress such as I have described: most of us have,
in the course of many hours misspent in music-halls, seen her. To say
that she may do good as well as harm is the same as saying that an
indecent photograph may do good as well as harm. If this is to be the
last word on the subject, then there is no logical reason why we
should not decorate the walls of elementary schools with indecent
photographs instead of maps, and teach the children limericks instead
of _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_ and _The Wreck of the Hesperus_. Mr Shaw
may retort that he would allow any man who did not find indecent
photographs and limericks "objectionable" to have his fill of them,
but that he would not allow him to thrust them upon children. But this
is to pass a moral judgment. If it is not certain whether the dangers
of the sensual parodies of the arts are greater than the dangers of
religion--or say, of geography--there is surely no more reason for
preserving the children from one than from the other.

Even if we waive this point for the sake of argument, is Mr Shaw's
other position tenable--that, if we consider any form of entertainment
objectionable, we should show our disapproval, not by trying to have
it stopped, but simply by staying away from it? Surely even in
music-hall performances, there is a line to be drawn somewhere. We can
no more be sure where good ends and evil begins than we can be sure
where light ends and darkness begins. But we all have a good enough
notion of when it is dark, and it is not so very difficult to tell
when a music-hall turn is out of bounds. Some people, it may be
granted, run to excess in their sense of propriety. They are as
delicate as the lady who, when carving a chicken at table, used to
inquire: "Will you have a wing or a limb?" On the other hand, there is
an equally large number of people who have no delicacy at all but who
are always ready to greet the obscene with a cheer. Their favourite
meal of entertainment is brutality for an entree and sensuality for a
sweet. They can even mix their dishes at times, as, many years ago in
Paris, when a woman stripped to the waist and with her hands tied
behind her back used to get down on her knees and wait for rats to be
loosed out of a cage and kill them one by one with her mouth. Is there
no reason for suppressing a