The state of the law is commonly ascribed to the typographical unions. "Protection for Printers": books should have no rights in America unless American typographers have been employed upon them. Beneath this argument lies the naked, brutal fact that at present, America having not yet produced the great universal literature that she is destined to produce, America imports much more from us than we do from her. If "sheets" were copyright, whenever sent, we should get the better of the exchange; we produce ten Masefields for one O. Henry, and England would print far more for America than America would for England. This may determine the printers' attitude; though even the printers might realise that a time might come when the boot would be on the other leg, and British publishers will be in a position to squeeze American authors to any extent, and British printers will insist on printing books which might more conveniently and economically be printed in America. But surely, in a matter like this, the law ought not to be dictated by the selfish and shortsighted conceptions of a trade. We have never met an English author who has had, or who has contemplated, relations with America who has not been bitterly contemptuous of the American attitude towards the copyright law. We have never spoken to an American author or publisher who has not admitted that it was a disgrace to America. Authors may be a small body, but they are as entitled to their rights as anybody else; these, also, are God's creatures. President Wilson himself, for all we know, may under the present regime have lost English copyright in his early works; and the irony of the law is that it presses most hardly on those who have still their fortunes to make, for the celebrated, or their agents, can successfully cope with it. * * * * * These lines will, as we are happy to know, meet the eyes of many Americans who write and many who do not. We appeal to them to agitate for a change in their law. That the American copyright law should be placed on precisely the same basis as the English copyright law we do not ask, and have no right to ask. But that English authors should automatically enjoy in the United States the same privileges as are enjoyed by native authors is a reasonable proposition. Cannot somebody move the Legislature? * * * * *