You will understand from the above account why you have been threatened with censorial proceedings for proposing to publish this novel. Instead of baiting the trap, it shows it to you shut, with the victim inside. That, our library censors and their dupes will say, is disgusting. Precisely. Do they ask Sudermann to make it attractive? The attraction of the book lies in the interest of the picture it gives of the phase of contemporary society with which it deals. It is full of vivid character-sketches which not only amuse us as we read but give us a whole social atmosphere to reflect on. If the reflections are bitter and even terrifying, serve us right: it is not Sudermann's business to keep us in a fool's paradise. The suppression of this book would not only be a deliberate protection of vice--which is always best served by turning off the light--but the reduction of every English adult to the condition of a child under tutelage. But even if the book were as false and mischievous as any of the romances which make the same theme agreeable and seductive I should object to its suppression all the same. No harm that the worst book could possibly do even if people could be forced to read it against their wills could be as great as the intellectual suffocation of the whole nation which a censorship effects. If Germany may read Sudermann and we may not, then the free adult German man will presently upset the Englishman's perambulator and leave him to console himself as best he may with the spotlessness of his pinafore. Yours faithfully, John Lane, Esq. G. Bernard Shaw. The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, W. 4, Edwardes Square Studios, W. _December 13th_, 1910. Dear Mr. Lane, I've waited before writing to you till I had finished "The Song of Songs." I have read every word of it carefully, and I think it would be a national disgrace if so fine a work of so great a master were suppressed. The book is powerful and sincere and absolutely moral in tendency and intention. Of course it is a terrible subject and there are bound to be terrible things in it, things that I, personally, dislike extremely; but I see that none of these things are insisted on for their own sake. None are unnecessary, except, possibly, the violent scene in Kellermann's studio, and _that_ would not really do anybody any harm. Judging the book as it ought to be judged--by tendency and intention--I cannot find anything in it to which the adjective used by the complainant could apply. It is a long and elaborate work, and the "terrible things" are comparatively few and far between. They offend my taste, but not my moral sense--_that_ remains appeased by the tragedy of it all, as in "real life."