THE MICROMETER OF MORALITY

The local agents of the Watch and Ward Society have shown themselves just as adept at making moral distinctions concerning their own actions as concerning the words of authors. Perhaps it is mere layman's thickheadedness that makes one regard "falsehood and deception" as somewhat inconsistent with the highest moral aims. Perhaps it is an indication of profligacy, if one thinks the methods employed in dogging a bookseller until he sells to a supposedly responsible buyer a book starred on the Boston List of Genuine Literature That You Mustn't Read. And doubtless one is being a free-thinker, if he feels that the system of Jesuit double-meanings is getting a little out-dated.

There must be pleasure, too, for those agents provacateurs in donning figurative false beards and going out on the vice-hunt, with their Index Expurgatorius in one hand and sufficient funds in the other to provide them with the latest and freshest in potentially risque literature. The two-kinds-of-falsehood idea should furnish an analogy for a two-purposes-in-reading theory, by which what must be kept with holy zeal from the unconcenrated eyes of ordinary mortals can be read with propriety, and of course without danger to their purity of soul, by these unofficial collagues of Boston's Finest.

Or--there is another, a pitiful possibility. Can it be that the Book Squad of the Watch and Ward feel harsh twinges of conscience at being obliged to use "falsehood and deception" in their glorious work? Can it be that the stern motto "The end justifies the means" only hides spirits saddened by the quality of those means? If so, it is time for some kind person to take the blindfold from the eyes of the self-made martyrs, and to instruct them, gently, that no one wants to suffer. Then, with the contentment of those who have done their work well, they can withdraw for a cozy session with the Peter Rabbit stories.