Baltimore Evening Sun (17 July 1911): 6.

From the office of the boomers comes this message to The Evening Sun:

Tell Mencken that nine good business men have sent voluntary subscriptions to the Greater Baltimore Committee since his last idiotic outburst.

Which seems to indicate, brethren, that idiocy to a contagious disease. If it is, the boomers certainly have no kick coming. Why, indeed, don’t they hire a dozen more idiots—and so gobble subscriptions by the hundred?

Those virtuosi of virtue who made a loud demand, a few weeks ago, that a troupe of Russian dancers then performing in New York be censored into union suits, now find themselves facing a somewhat unpleasant situation, for the police having decided that the cavortings of the visitors were perfectly proper, despite a certain bareness of leg, the manager of the visitors now talks of suing his volunteer critics for libel. Such a suit would delight the gods—and perhaps put an end to the more frenzied sort of crusading. Once the moralist is made to understand that he must pay for all damage caused by his denunciations, he will return to the raiding of saloons and other such safer sports, and leave theatrical managers in peace.

The New York Evening Sun, discussing the case of the Russians, quotes an article I printed in this column last week, and gives its approval to the doctrine that existing laws are amply sufficient to meet any actual violations of decency. But it makes the point that certain theatrical managers would probably be better off with a censorship than they are today without it, for once a given play had been licensed, they could go on presenting it regardless of protests. The approval of the censor, in brief, would act as a bar to subsequent prosecution, and the manager who succeeded in getting a nasty play through the censor’s office would be perfectly safe thereafter.

This is true. That very thing, in fact, has happened in England, where the theatrical managers, almost to a man, are violently in favor of the censorship, and resist the effort of the dramatists and dramatic critics to have it abolished. But has the British censorship actually improved the morals of the English stage? Not at all. The censor to quick to prohibit such serious pieces as Ibsen’s “Ghosts” and Brieux’s “Les Avaries,” which discuss important subjects clearly, but frankly and honestly—but he passes hundreds of nasty pieces which deal with indecencies by innuendo and double entendre. “Ghosts” was banned, but “The Turtle” and “Dear Old Charlie” got through. This happened and happens because the indecency in such pieces always depends, in the main, upon the obscene meaning given to apparently innocent words and situations by the actors. The text of a play, which is all that the censor sees, may be entirely innocuous. But the actual performance of that play may reek with obscenity.

A mere theory? Not at all. Scores of cases in point might be cited—and many of them actually were cited at the recent parliamentary hearing on the censorship. For example, there was Pinero’s farce, “A Wife Without a Smile.” In text this was one of the most amusing pieces of its time, and in addition it was perfectly clean from curtain to curtain. I know because I have read it four or five times—and with increasing delight. But when it was produced in London, there was introduced into the “business”—i. e., into the action as opposed to the dialogue—a piece of indecency so atrocious that even the hardened first-nighters gasped. Nothing worse had ever been seen in a first-class theatre. And yet “A Wife Without a Smile” had passed the censor.

The fear that a censorship would make American managers timid, and so improve the morals of the stage, is thus seen to be without much ground. Our censor, like the English censor, would have to confine his inspection to the actual book of the play. It would be impossible to ask a manager to hire actors, buy scenery, bring his play to its final rehearsal—and then call in the censor. He would demand a judgment in advance—that is to say, before he had actually invested any money in the play—and common justice would require that he get it.

But why not license his play with the express understanding that no indecency shall be introduced into its “business” subsequently and no addition made to its dialogue? Why not let the censor visit the theatres to see that his injunctions have been obeyed. The objection to that scheme is the excellent one that it has worked very badly in England. Theoretically, the censor has a right to order changes in any play, even after he has once approved it in manuscript, but actually the business is beyond him. He cannot go to 40 theatres six nights a week, and so there is little practical check upon indecency.

Little check, I should say, save in public opinion. In England, as here, it is public opinion that really determines the character of stage plays. The dirty farces which elude the censor are quickly killed, as a rule, at the box office. In the West End there are a few theatres which give them profitably—to audiences beyond all danger of contamination. But in the average English theatre, as in the average American theatre, the crowd demands a reasonable decorum. “A Wife Without a Smile” failed miserably—not because the censor attacked it, for he did nothing of the sort, but because it disgusted the public. In a few weeks every counoisseur of indecency in London had seen it—and then the curtain came down upon it.

But the real objection to a censorship, in this country, is not that it would be useless, but that it would open the way for fraud and corruption. The English censor, however justly he may be denounced for stupidity, is at least an honest man. He takes no graft! he is uninfluenced by outcries; his job does not depend upon the good will of a political boss nor even upon that of a camorra of specialists in chemical purity. Would the American municipal censor, say in New York, or Boston, or Chicago, or Baltimore, be of that kidney? The question carries its own answer. Every sane man knows very well that the censorship in every great American city would quickly become one of the richest pawns in the political game. It would be worth more, in Baltimore, than any other job. The revenues from blackmail would be all the traffic would bear. And it would be the producer of smutty musical comedies and not the producers of “Ghosts” who would be most eager and most able to pay the freight.

Boil away! Watch the School Board! Wash the children! Swat the fly! Look out for the Reform League!