The ordinary British citizen had, of course, no knowledge of the inside circumstances of this case; all he saw was that a writer of nasty plays tripped jauntily into the limelight and brought a libel suit against a father for trying to save his son. Of the fact that the father was a bad one, and the son worse, and that the courts were being used to maintain a corrupt ruling class--those things the average Englishman did not know. He will never know them until there is a Socialist daily press in England, with the right to tell the truth about the ruling class, something which at present the libel laws prevent. Here is material for a drama, far greater than any that Wilde wrote; and Frank Harris gives us the whole story. In the early part of it he sees Oscar clearly as the pitiful victim of his own will-less nature; but when the tragedy of this nature reaches its climax, Harris lets himself be tempted into offering Wilde to us in a new rôle, that of a persecuted hero and martyred genius. Much as Harris may abhor Oscar’s sin, he abhors the leading British virtues still more; so he is in the position of Milton dealing with Satan--he cannot keep from sympathizing with his character, in spite of logic. To be sure, he gives us the facts, so that we can judge for ourselves, if we have the brains; and we must try to be worthy of that trust! It seems evident enough that Oscar was sent to prison, not because of his genius, nor yet because of his vices, but simply because he attacked in a conspicuous and aggravating way a member of the hallowed ruling caste of Britain. You may call that turning the tragedy into a Socialist tract; but a man cannot interpret any case of social persecution unless he sees its economic implications--unless, in other words, he understands the class struggle. If Frank Harris had been a conscious social revolutionist, his book would have been more powerful and convincing, because he would have been less tempted to blame individuals for evils which are social in their origin. He would have given us an economic interpretation of Oscar, the spoiled darling of a putrescent leisure class, thrown overboard, like Jonah, as a sacrifice in a middle-class hurricane of virtue.