Let us recapitulate the elements of the American copyright law as they at present stand. Copyright in America is defined by a law of 1909. That Act lays down that a book, to secure legal protection, must be manufactured in the United States of America; the stipulation was carried on from an earlier statute. A book published in the English language may obtain interim protection for one month from the date of publication if a copy is forwarded to an office in Washington; but at the end of the month protection lapses. Copyright is lost unless a book (or a newspaper contribution) has been "set up" in the States and issued there within a month of its publication in Great Britain. * * * * * Now we have no hesitation in describing the present copyright arrangements as between England and America as immoral and unjust. They do not greatly handicap authors of international reputation, so far as their new books are concerned. If--he will forgive us for using his name as an illustration--Mr. Rudyard Kipling has written a new book, he will have no difficulty whatever in getting an American publisher to put it into type in America and issue it at a date approximate to that of the English publication. But even the eminent and the "arrived" are put to some trouble and expense by the necessity of "securing copyright," and on those who are not so eminent the law presses very hardly indeed. There are famous English authors whose early books are not copyright in America; there are young English authors who have to go through the anguish of seeing American copyright expire whilst some American publisher is debating whether or not he shall take "sheets" of a book from England; and "first books" of any character published in England can virtually never be copyrighted in America. It may, and should, be granted that as a body American publishers are more just and generous than their laws. We know of many cases in which the English authors of non-copyright books have obtained from American publishers precisely the same royalties as they have obtained from their English publishers. We know also of cases--relatively few, we gladly admit--in which the works of English authors have been pirated by American editors and publishers without sanction, thanks, or payment. But the mere fact that in most instances American publishers are ashamed to take advantage of the law, and that in other instances they do the handsome thing in order to secure "favours to come," is no palliation of the law. It is a harsh and a selfish law; a law unworthy of a great nation, a nation which is second to none in its professions and in its intentions with regard to the welfare of humanity at large. * * * * *