ample, would two major magazines, Maclean's in Canada and Life in the U.S., have published in the last year a total of four articles on the subject for their millions of readers? Would CBS radio have done a week-long series on homosexuality? Even television-which with notable consistency avoids any subject not of interest to literally every viewer-has discussed the subject. Can any group of editors have missed all this evidence?

The matter of pregnancy is of urgent interest in 1965. The rise in illegitimate pregnancies among high school girls in this country has in recent years been astronomical. The figures are repeatedly cited with increasing alarm in magazines and newspapers, on radio and television. Surely a novelization of this disturbing, even tragic problem, which vitally affects our social fabric not only ought to be able to find a publisher, but merits wide distribution.

As to the matter of abortion, it would seem worth the notice of this paperback publisher, with a readership requirement of perhaps 100 thousand to make his operations profitable, that a motion picture whose box office grosses indicate that it was seen by millions, and whose female star was nominated for an Academy Award in 1963-Love with a Proper Strangerdealt with both illegitimate pregnancy and abortion.

When the state of affairs reaches the point in our country where book publishers are even more timid than movie makers, we become acutely aware that the decent literature crusaders are capable of doing real damage. Pressure groups, because they work quietly, can be more dangerous

than mobs.

Further evidence of the backlash resulting from the increasing freedom to write, publish and read, appears in George P. Elliott's article "Against Pornography" in the March issue of

Harper's magazine. This is alarming because Harper's is a liberal journal for intelligent, educated, influential readers. Should they join the neopuritan army, its power would increase out of proportion to its numbers.

That Elliott's article is loosely constructed, semantically vague and naively self-contradictory will perhaps limit its effectiveness. But because it voices from a respectable rostrum sentimental appeals to "our lost innocence," "decency," "the family," and "civilization," and fervently damns "perverts," "intellectuals," and "nihilists," it is emotional dynamite.

When Elliott equates civilization exclusively with 20th century U. S. middle class culture he is merely laughable. But when he smears all who oppose his narrow priggishness as "nihilists" intent upon destroying the American way of life, his fulminations have an ugly ring of demagoguery, especially when we note that it is Elliott himself who wants to abridge freedom of the press.

"Pornography," writes Elliott, "is the representation of directly or indirectly erotic acts with an intrusive vividness which offends decency without aesthetic justification." He adds, "Obviously this definition does not just describe but also judges; quite as obviously it contains terms that need pinning down-decency, for example.

Yet he never succeeds in defining decency. He uses the word often, in the expression "decent citizens," for example, meaning those who share his prejudices, and "decent social opinion," meaning his own. He is also addicted to the word "perverted." For example, in discussing the permissability of a copulation scene in a novel he regards as a work of art (as opposed to Tennessee Williams' and Elia Kazan's fine film Baby Doll, which he considers pornographic) Elliott writes that the reader ". . . will