f 'The Girl Who Went' ...
and 'The Girl Who Lost' ... (I do not remember what she lost, but I
passionately want to know; such are the successes of Puritanism).

It is true that in some directions Puritanism has recently weakened.
Plays long outcast, such as 'Damaged Goods,' 'Ghosts,' and 'The Three
Daughters of Monsieur Dupont' have unashamedly taken the boards, but I
fear that this does not exhibit the redemption of virtue by sin: if the
newspapers had not conducted a campaign for the protection of the
notoriously guileless New Zealand soldiers against the flapper with the
hundred heads (every one of them filled with evil), if contagious
diseases had not suddenly become fashionable, these plays would still be
lying with the other unborn in the limbo of the Lord Chamberlain. But
Puritanism has long teeth; it can still drive out of politics our next
Charles Dilke, our next Parnell, however generous or gifted; it still
hangs over the Law Courts, where women may be ordered out, or where
cases may be heard _in camera_; it still holds some sway over everything
but private life, where humanity recoups its public losses.

Puritan opinion has therefore a broader face of attack on the novel than
is afforded by the Library Censorship. For the latter can injure a book
but it cannot suppress it; on the whole banned books have suffered, but
they have also benefited because many people buy what they cannot
borrow, and because many buy the books which the Puritans advertise as
unfit to read. (They are much disappointed, as a rule, unless they are
themselves Puritans.) That buying class is not very large, but it
counts, and I suppose we must charitably assume that the people who post
to the bookseller to purchase the works which the library has rejected
are supporters of literary sincerity; we must form our private opinion
as to that. But whether the people who buy the banned book are or are
not eager to obtain four-and-six penn'orth of truth, the fact remains
that they do buy, that the deplorable authors do live, and that they do
persist in writing their regrettable novels. The libraries have not
killed sincerity; they have done no more than trammel it. For instance,
in the well-known cases of _The Devil's Garden_, _Sinister Street_, and
_The Woman Thou Gavest Me_, the faltering hesitation of the circulating
libraries resulted in a colossal advertisement, of which Mr Maxwell and
Mr Compton Mackenzie made the best, and Mr Hall Caine of