R. G.

Some new Agitation is always fretting the souls of those who feel that it is their task to save the world from itself. Of late it has been Birth Control. They have been going to prison for merely mentioning the words Birth Control in the presence of an ingenue government. And all the time the government has the most perfect system of Birth Control for genius and art—the National Board of Censorship—so perfect as to produce sterility.

A simple mind would wonder why these agitators don’t first fight the censorship, and perhaps all these things would be added unto them!

Last winter a rumor did come out of New York that a few of these and a few artists were trying to form a plan of unorganized but concerted action, each profession or art or group protesting to the state on its own behalf. It turned out to be another of those Spoon River things: when the test came a few stood by the idea, but the others were either too lily-livered to have their names appear or the inevitable Puritan ancestor arose to remind them that after all they were Plymouth Rocks.

And all the while the tale grows finer yet:

Jerome Blum, a painter of reputation, a real painter, returned from China in the spring naively bringing with him, to this land of the free, a little collection of Chinese and Japanese art to keep by him for the delight of his soul. In the collection was a book over one hundred and fifty years old, containing eight original paintings on silk, by one of the greatest of Chinese painters, and a Japanese scroll, twelve feet long, of even finer workmanship.

Mr. Blum was summoned before the Collector of the Port of Chicago. The two works described had been declared obscene by an appraiser: “They would arouse the passions of an ordinary man.” They were to be destroyed, with the possible inclusions of the entire case of old bronzes, tapestries, embroideries, etc., in which they were shipped. Mr. Blum had laid himself open to a fine of thousands of dollars, with something like five years imprisonment, for good measure.

Law versus Art. Mr. Blum offered to paint out all objectionable parts, asked permission to send the things back to China or permission to present them to some museum. “Art or no Art, all paintings of the kind were to be burned” was the decree from the customs officials. And the two “obscene” works of art were burned in the furnace of the Federal building.

No need here to go into what Mr. Blum must have suffered as an artist over the destruction of precious beauty never to be replaced—or as a man over the delicate and unobscene discussions, by the officials, of the objectionable parts, over the injustice of having his property destroyed without trial before a jury of his peers.

All people of any education know that the art of all ancient peoples sprung from a desire to recreate for the hearts of men the mystery of creation and reproduction of life; thence came religion to explain to the minds of men the awe and wonder of creation. The Art of the Orient is almost wholly concerned with these subjects. Here was where Mr. Blum’s became “obscene” art.

If the censors should become informed woe for the Christian churches, each raising an “obscene” phallic symbol, in the cross, shamelessly uncensored to the sky; the bishops would mourn their fish-mouthed phallic hats, and so on endlessly.

Who knows but if left to themselves they may not even reach themselves in their unlimited censorship and be their own destruction?