Municipal Judge Derides Book-Banning, Urges Common Sense to Guard Morals

Eiijah Adlow '16, Associate Justice at Bosten Municipal Court, who gave the Watch and Ward Society its first major fatback last week by refusing to ban risking Caldwell's "Tragic Ground," old the SERVICE NEWS yesterday that common sense" must be the judiciary's side in decisions regarding controversial temperature.

"Let's be practical," Judge Adlow asserted. "Why go to a book-seller or the library when the evening paper brings you the complete details of Errol Flynn's latest romance or Chaplin's misadventures?"

From the point of view of the courts," continued, "this matter is based on reaction of the average man. We do make our decisions according to the reaction of literary critics. The important using is whether the lewd or questionable arts of the books we must pass judgement upon will have the effect of promoting lust."

Stressing that the obscenity statute was intended originally for the protection of youthful morals and that "to talk about the morals of grown-ups is to tread on dangerous ground," Judge Adlow added, "When we come to books in which an occasional passage may be found to be suggestive, or even as some claim, indecent, the question becomes. 'Will the young boy or girl who might ordinarily be interested bother reading 300 pages in order to enjoy the questionable pleasure which a half or a whole page of suggestive narration may afford?"

"I think," the former State Senator went on to say, "that the best answer to the entire question is found in the fact that there are hundreds of books, similar to those banned, in circulation in our libraries, and so far as I known, there has been no made rush by the younger generation to read them."

"Most of the interest in the recently banned books," he commented, "has been stimulated because they are 'verboten,' not because of any lust which they might promote. So far as youth is concerned, the test is a simple one: there are certain types of literature which on their face are revealed as lewd and disgusting productions. About these there can be no question. But these types are rarely found in bookstores, their distribution being handled largely by underworld characters."

Judge Adlow has presided over cases similar to the recent ones involving "Strange Fruit" and "Forever Amber" several times during his 16-year career on the bench. He vividly recalls an episode in which the Watch and Ward Society urged the arrest of a young man who had been Hawkins lascivious pamphlets in front of the Old Howard.

The accused produced conclusive evidence that all of the offensive material, pictorial and otherwise, had been lifted from the pages of a Harvard comic magazine known as the "Lampoon."

While insisting that there must be some 'supervision over public morals, Judge Adlow is inclined to belittle the book-banning art as it has recently found realization in the Hub.