Now and then a publisher dares, and dares too far. Such is the case of _The Rainbow_, by Mr D. H. Lawrence, where the usual methods of Puritan terrorism were applied, where the publisher was taken into court, and made to eat humble pie, knowing that if he refused he must drink hemlock. Certainly _The Rainbow_ was a bad book, for it was an ill-written book, a book of hatred and desire ... but many of us are people of hatred and desire, and I submit that there is no freedom when a minority of one in a nation of fifty millions is hampered in the expression of his feelings. More than one opinion has been held by one man and is now the belief of all the world. The beliefs of to-morrow will be slain if we suppress to-day the opinion of one. I would surrender all the rupees and virgins of Bengal for the sake of the atom of truth which may, in another age, build up immortal understanding in the heart of man. All this has frightened publishers, so that they will now take no risks, and even the shy sincerity of English writers is turned away. The public subserve the Puritans, little mean people whom Mr Wells ideally nicknamed 'Key-hole,' or 'Snuffles,' little people who form 'watch committees' or 'vigilance societies'; who easily discover the obscene because it hangs like a film before their eyes, little people who keep the window shut. The police must obey, or be called corrupt; the courts are ready to apply the law severely rather than leniently, for who shall play devil's advocate at the Old Bailey? No wonder the publishers are frightened; the combination of their timidity, of truculent Puritanism and of a reluctantly vigilant police makes it almost impossible to _publish_ a sincere work. One result is that we are deprived of translations of foreign novels, some of which are of the first rank. There is _Le Journal d'une Femme de Chambre_; there is _Aphrodite_, the work of M. Pierre Louys, who is an artist in his way; there is Mr Boylesve's delicate, inwrought _La Lecon d'Amour dans un Parc_; there is the Parisian mischief of M. Prevost's _Lettres de Femmes_, the elegance of M. Henri de Regnier. _Sanin_ got through, how I do not know; I have not read the translation, and it may very well be that it escaped only after the translator had thickly coated it with the soapsuds of English virtue.