Obscene Censors, Indianapolis Times (Article, 1929)

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Obscene Censors

The censors are at it again. This time the book is a novel by a reputable English writer, Miss Radclyffe Hall. The theme of "The Well of Loneliness" is so-called inversion.

John S. Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, accompanies police in a spectacular raid on the publishing house and confiscated the entire edition. Thanks to Sumner, the book has been given columns of free first page press publicity. Doubtless this vice hunter's charge of obscenity will create a flourishing bootleg sale for an otherwise obscure book.

If Sumner were not so entirely lacking in humor, he would be suspected as an advertising agent skilled in increasing circulation of such books.

We have not read this novel, and have no particular interest in it. But we are willing to accept the word of forty leading British authors--including Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, Havelock Ellis and Bennet-- that it is a serious and legimate literary product.

Pornography is a common product. It is produced however, more often by certain types of readers than by writers. There is plenty of smut even in the Bible for readers with unclean minds who wish to put it there.

Certainly there is a social problem of physical sex abnormality. We are inclined to believe, however, that a wider and therefore more serious social problem is the mental abnormality of the Sumners, whose joy is in sniffing obscenity which does not exist outside their own minds.

Censorship is an evil thing, anywhere and at any time. But it is at its worst in the hands of Sumners.