homosexuals and which thrives upon the unwillingness of its victims to report to or give information to the police, or to testify against the blackmailers in court. Significantly, as developed here, it is not so much the self-revelation or publicity which the victims fear as it is the fact that present English law makes it almost mandatory upon the state to prosecute and, if found guilty, imprison the witnesses for the criminal acts to which they would have been obliged to confess. Fortunately, the barristerhero who becomes inadvertently involved by the suicide of a young homosexual he had known, has the courage to risk his career, risk losing his wife, and risk possible prosecution, and to undertake, almost singlehandedly, to unmask and destroy the blackmailers. Corny? That's the only word for it!

What is significant about this movie-book, and I emphasize movie, is the forthright and unmistakeable denunciation of the antiquated laws which make what might be an immoral act a criminal act, and which, by their very existence, make possible and even encourage the very real crime of blackmail. Here are two brief quotes which illustrate this point:

"What makes you think it (the blackmail) has anything to do with homosexuality?"

"Nine cases out of ten are, while the law stands the way it does. That's not my business, the rights and wrongs. But the way the law stands it's the blackmailer's bonanza."

"I'm a policeman. I want to enforce the law. But when the law isn't accepted by public opinion, you get the double code. Food restrictions which aren't accepted produce a black market; and the easiest way of stamping it out is to ease the restrictions. Until they change the homsexuality laws, we'll have a black

one

market or rather blackmail market -in in sex."

Not once but several times is it stated in unequivocal terms that it is not the homosexuals, who are but poor and pitiable wretches, nor even the blackmailers, who really are only taking advantage of a made to order situation, who are the villains of this piece, but the lawmakers of a bygone era who carelessly allowed these laws to be foisted upon an unsuspecting society. Perhaps even greater villains are those contemporary legislators who, and I again quote: "abstained or voted against implementing the Wolfenden recommendations on homosexuality." Nor is society itself absolved for: "of course in our democracy, they (the legislators) were quite right. They wanted to get reelected; and they were afraid that if they repealed the laws which made homosexuality a crime, they would be regarded as condoning it as a sin. So I suppose it's really the men and women voters who are guiltythey or what politicians think they feel."

Imagine words like these being spoken by a police inspector! Perhaps it is not too surprising to find them in a book, but think of their being said on a movie screen-and I assume that these words are in the movie! Apparently they cannot yet be spoken on the west coast, but I doubt that they could have been spoken in England only a few years ago. Changes are being made.

I cannot in all truthfulness say that ONE has been responsible for the changes which have made VICTIM, the movie, possible, but these are the changes ONE is fighting for and certainly such changes demonstrate that we are not fighting for a lost cause.

Forget VICTIM, the book, but remember it as a milestone in the homosexual's struggle for fair treatment and equality under the law. M. M.