_allow_these_volumes_to_be_checked_out_without_any_need_for_ _concern."_ This is surely enough! My books are beyond reproach; but I as a person am publicly condemned! Why? Due to this "scheme" I already talk about earlier. Therefore, do not think that the "Karl-May-persecution" or, to put it a bit more decently, the "Karl-May-problem" was a matter of literature. Here are, by no means, literary or even ethical reasons at play, but it is, to call it by its proper name, a solely personal butchering for the morally lowest reasons pertaining to my lawsuits. What they say in this context about moral and journalistic necessities is nothing but a bombastic show, to conceal the truth. If someone would want to write a novel about this, this could become the most sensational one of all colportage novels, and the main characters would be the following: The former chief editor Dr. Hermann Cardauns in Bonn, the former colporteuse Pauline Münchmeyer in Dresden, the Franciscan monk Dr. Expeditus Schmidt in Munich, the former social democrat Rudolf Lebius in Charlottenburg, who has seceded from the Christian church, the Benedictine Father Ansgar Pöllmann in Beuron, and the lawyer of the colporteuse Münchmeyer, Dr. Gerlach in Niederlößnitz near Dresden. This novel would be most important for the purpose of shedding some light on the present legislation and would also cast surprising side-lights on other conditions, conditions of society, business, and the psyche. There, we would get to see much filth, very much filth, which is anything but tasteful, and thus, I want, since I have to mention and demonstrate this filth here as well, to try my best to get this over with as quickly as possible. VIII. My Lawsuits Jørgensen [a], whom my readers will probably know, says in his parable "The Shadow" to the poet: "You do not know what you are doing, when you are sitting and writing here and your soul is filled by the power of the wine and the night. You do not know how many people's fate is reshaped, created, changed by a single line of yours on the white paper. You do not know how many a human joy you are killing, how many a death sentence you are signing, here, in your quiet solitude, by the peaceful lamp, between the flowery glasses and the bottle of burgundy. Consider, _that_we_others_act_out_what_you_poets_write._ We are as you have shaped us. The youth of this realm repeats your creation like shadows. We are as chaste as you are; we are as immoral as you want us to be. The young men believe according to your belief in or denial of any faith. The young girls are as decent or frivolous as the women are your glorify." [a] Jens Johannes Jørgensen (1866-1956)