We have still to examine the claims of the automatic writers; but, after all this, the reader will not expect much. Never yet was a message received which could not have been learned by the medium in a normal way. The overwhelming mass of the messages which are delivered daily in every country are fraudulent. In an amusing recent work (_The Road to En-Dor_) two officers have shown us how easy it was to dupe even educated men by these professions of marvellous powers. The advantage is on the side of the conjurer every time, and the sitter has little chance. Let the mediums come before a competent tribunal. All sorts of inducements have been offered to them to do so, but they are very shy of competent investigators. In 1911 an advertisement in the _Times_ offered £1,000 to any medium who would merely give proof of possessing telepathic power, and there was not a single offer. This year Mr. Joseph Rinn, a former member of the American Society for Psychical Research and a life-long inquirer, has deposited with that Society a sum of £1,000 for any evidence of communication with the dead under proper conditions. There will again be no application. Mediums prefer a simpler and more reverent audience, even if the fees be smaller. But those who consult them under their own conditions, knowing that fraud has been practised under those conditions from San Francisco to Petrograd ever since 1848, must not talk to us about "evidence." FOOTNOTES: [14] The chapter should be read in Truesdell's racy book, which is now unfortunately rare, _Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of Spiritualism_ (1883), pp. 276-307. [15] These experiments are recorded in his _Experiments in Psychical Science_ (1919), pp. 134-35 and 170-89. CHAPTER VIII AUTOMATIC WRITING The Spiritualist--if any Spiritualist reader has persevered thus far--will be surprised to hear that many Rationalists censure me because I decline to admit that his movement is "all fraud." For heaven's sake, he will exclaim, let us hear something about our honesty for a change! Even the impartial outsider will possibly welcome such a change. How is it possible, he will ask, that so many distinguished men have given their names to the movement if it is all fraudulent?