I do not believe there is a
pennyworth of harm in the police news, as such. Even divorce news,
though contemptible enough, can really in most cases be left to the
discretion of grown people; and how far children get hold of such
things is a problem for the home and not for the nation. But there is a
certain class of evils which a healthy man or woman can actually go
through life without knowing anything about at all. These, I say, should
be stamped and blackened out of every newspaper with the thickest black
of the Russian censor. Such cases should either be always tried _in
camera_ or reporting them should be a punishable offence. The common
weakness of Nature and the sins that flesh is heir to we can leave
people to find in newspapers. Men can safely see in the papers what they
have already seen in the streets. They may safely find in their journals
what they have already found in themselves. But we do not want the
imaginations of rational and decent people clouded with the horrors of
some obscene insanity which has no more to do with human life than the
man in Bedlam who thinks he is a chicken. And, if this vile matter is
admitted, let it be simply with a mention of the Latin or legal name of
the crime, and with no details whatever.
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