withdrawing the
book, and one wonders what would happen if just once, supported by a
common fund, a publisher were to face the Puritans, let the case go for
trial, test the law. One wonders what the result might not be in the
hands of, for instance, Sir John Simon. He might win a glorious victory
for English letters; he might do away with much of the muckraking which
is keeping English letters in subjection because nobody dares drag it
out for public exposure and combat. Until that happens Puritan influence
is more potent than a score of convictions, for no publisher knows what
he may do and what he may not; prosecution is as effective in threat as
in action, and I hope that if ever this struggle comes it will be over
some book of mine.

Let it be clear that no blame attaches to the publisher; he does not
trade under the name 'Galahad & Co.'; he knows that even defeated
Puritans would attempt to avenge their downfall, and malignantly pursue
all the works he issued in every municipal library. But still it is a
pity that no publisher will face them; half a dozen of our best known
publishers are knights: perhaps one day one of them will put on his
armour.

This secret terrorism is a national calamity, for it procures the
sterilisation of the English novel. It was always so, for there is not
complete sincerity in _Tom Jones_, or in _A Mummer's Wife_, even as the
word sincerity is understood in England, and there is little nowadays.
We have to-day a certain number of fairly courageous novelists whose
works are alluded to in other chapters, but they are not completely
sincere. If they were they would not be concerned with censorships; they
would not be published at all. I do not suggest that they wish to be
insincere, but they cannot help it. Their insincerity, I suspect, as
exemplified by the avoidance of certain details, arises from the
necessity of that avoidance; it arises also from the habit of
concealment and evasion which a stupefied public, led by a neurotic
faction, has imposed upon them.

Our novelists openly discuss every feature of social life, politics,
religion, but they cast over sex a thick veil of ellipse and metaphor.
Thus Mr Onions suggests, but dares not name, the disease a character
contracts; Mr Lawrence leaves in some doubt the actual deeds of his
_Trespasser_, while 'H. H. Richardson' leaves to our conjectures the
habits of Schilsky. (So do I, you see; if I were to say exactly what I
mean it would