To me this sort of thing is dull and bespeaks the low state to which our mental activities have fallen. When it comes to the matter of serious letters it is the worst. In New York a literary region of terror has been and is now being attempted. The publisher of Freud’s “Leonardo” is warned before he brings it out that he will be prosecuted--a work that probably has no more defect than that of being intelligent and true. Similarly, Mr. Przybyszewski’s “Homo Sapiens,” a by no means pornographic work, was at once seized on its appearance and the publishers frightened into withdrawing it. This was true of “Hagar Revelly,” “Tess of the d’Urbevilles,” “Sapho,” “Jude the Obscure,” “Rose of Dutchers Cooley,” “A Lady of Quality,” “A Summer in Arcady,” and scores of others. Imagine banning a book like “A Summer in Arcady” from the public libraries! Even “The Sexual Question” by the eminent August Forel has been banned and of course all of Kraft-Ebling (Freud and Ellis are sold only on the written order of a doctor--a mental prescription as it were). Think of it--the work of a scientist of Freud’s attainments! This sort of interference with serious letters and science is to me the worst and most corrupting form of espionage which is conceivable to the human mind. It plumbs the depths of ignorance and intolerance; if not checked it can and will dam initiative and inspiration at the source. Life, if it is anything at all, is a thing to be observed, studied, interpreted. We cannot know too much about it because as yet we know nothing. It is our one great realm of discovery. The artist, if left to himself, may be safely trusted to observe, synchronize and articulate human knowledge in the most comprehensive form. Human nature will seek and have what it needs, the vice crusaders to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no compulsion on any one to read; one must pay to do so. What is more, one must have taste inherently to select, a brain and a heart to understand. With all these safeguards and a double score of capable critics in every land to praise or blame, what need really is there for a censor, or a dozen of them, each far less fitted than any of the working critics to indulge his personal predilection and opposition, and to appeal to the courts if he is disagreed with?