I want to make it quite clear that I have the greatest sympathy with the Board of Censors. It is a beastly, unpaid, voluntary job and is one which they carry out, to my mind, to the best of their abilities, according to the lights which God has given them and, as a result of it, they naturally get more kicks than halfpence. I seconded this motion originally at Senator Sir John Keane's request because he was not quite certain that he could find anybody else to second this rather contentious motion at this particular time, and if he had not a seconder there could be no discussion. I also understood that a considerable number of the members of the House desired to speak. In fact, they have done so. I think I said when I seconded the motion that the form in which Senator Sir John Keane put down the motion was possibly unfortunate. It looked as if it was almost a personal attack on the Board of Censors, and certainly Senator Magennis took it very like as if he thought that was so. I do not think that was really Senator Sir John Keane's idea. I feel, however, it would have been more constructive if he had suggested to the House that they should examine the whole thing and finally recommend to the Ministry an examination of the whole original Censorship Act, particularly where it bore on what one might call the modern trend of literature. That, I think, would have been more advisable.
The debate produced two enormous extremes. There were arguments between two very able barristers—one who sought a very much wider freedom in what he and the nation as a whole was allowed to read, and the other defending the work of the Censorship Board tooth and nail in a speech unfortunately of such inordinate length that it lost an enormous amount of the value of what was really a very able argument. Over and above that, we had an extremely important contribution from Senator Fitzgerald which reflected a good deal of modern thought rather than ancient theory.
I do not think Senator Sir John Keane has substantiated his motion, certainly not in the form in which it has been put down, but his idea has developed a debate which has given me, at any rate, and a good many Senators very considerable food for reflection. My first reflection is: here is a country in which the very great majority, practically the whole population, belong to one particular community of the Christian Faith. If they require and pass a law which demands an absolutely iron, rigid censorship, they are entitled to do so and the minority living in the country must conform to those views, and protests carry very little weight. My second reflection is that, although I do not bother to read them, there is a plethora of the type of book which the House has been discussing and, over and above that, there are quantities of other extremely coarse and vulgar books which cut very little ice. They are read; they are thrown away and they are no use to anybody. They never survive. They are not books one will buy in half-calf and put into one's library. I personally think many of them should never have seen the printer's press. As I said before, I think this censorship is a horrible, miserable business for educated men who have, I hope, aesthetic minds and who have to wallow in a book which leaves them cold or which they must throw on one side, according to the provisions of the Act, but I do think that in carrying out their duties, the censors have been examining sentences with a microscope, and at the same time they have been looking at the modern world with inverted telescopes. That is no help. Finally, I feel that the board have prided themselves— Senator Magennis stated it again and again—on carrying out their duties—their voluntary duties, I admit—like judges, strictly according to the letter of the law, and not in the spirit which I think an Act of this type demands. There is far more need for that spirit in doing this work of censorship than there is, say, in the administration of commercial law, or something of that kind, which comes before our judges in the courts. There is really no analogy between the two things. In doing the work of censorship there is needed the spirit which will carry one into modern thought. I think it is the absence of that spirit in the examination of these books and of every sentence in them that, in effect, has reduced the value of censorship during the many years it has been in operation here.
I think that we in this House must realise that we belong to the older generation, that we are complete "has beens" in the eyes of the young people of this country, but I still think we can guide them to a very great extent. If we are going to guide them we must attempt to understand their point of view. It is only then that we will be able to do it. We must remember that we are old men in a world which is developing probably not on the same lines as we were brought up on ourselves. We are gradually slipping backwards. A great many of us, myself included, have really not got much further to slip. I think that if we are to help those young people we must shape our actions differently. We must not act as if our offspring were degenerates searching for every possible obscenity that they can find in a book or sentence, but rather as if they were sensible young men and women with a genuine belief in the faith in which they have been brought up and which will sustain them when they do happen to come on a book calculated to deprave. I do not think that the outlook of the young men and women of to-day is any the worse for that want of reticence which is evident in these days and to which Senator Fitzgerald referred, of short skirts and short sleves. In fact, I think it is generally a great deal more healthy than the outlook of past times when people sought to find some obscenity in almost every sentence.
I think that censorship is definitely necessary. Those who do not think so have only to look to Buenos Aires in one direction and Port Said in another where there is no censorship. The result in both places is that practically everybody is inoculated with depravity through their bodies. I feel that we do not want that, so that censorship must definitely continue. But no censorship will turn what I call a Dirty Dick into a clean one. He will find something obscene and depraving in almost every sentence that he reads, but those Dirty Dicks are few and far between. I believe that of the many books that I have read, coarse and vulgar as they were, the average young man and young woman would pass that sort of writing by.
I think the fact that so many members of this House have intervened in this debate definitely justifies its inception. I think it established the fact that the labours of the older men—voluntary labours, mark you—who have, with difficulty, been collected to form the Censorship Board, require some reinforcement of sensible young men and women, if they can be got. If those sensible young men and women can be got, let them confer together and arrive at what is the real outlook of the youth of this country who, I am perfectly satisfied, should, with very few exceptions, be allowed to read a little bit more than the censors allow them to read now. I would also suggest that the Government should examine the actual working of the provisions of the present Act so that when you get a board of censors, the members of which feel that they must work according to the letter of the law, they will be given a little more latitude than the present members of the board find themselves provided with.
