But if the State took over this industry it should be
liberal in affording novel-producers facilities for obtaining fresh
material, local colour, etc. At all costs the output of salubrious
and sedative fiction must be maintained if only as an antidote to the
subversive and revolutionary literature now freely disseminated among
the proletariat.
COLONEL WEDGWOOD. HOW do you expect a workman earning only three
pounds a week to afford seven shillings for every novel that he
buys?--Personally I should like to see the cost reduced, but I
understand that if the price of novels were fixed at one shilling
it would involve the State in an expenditure of ten million pounds
annually, even with the present reduced output of novels, which has
fallen during the War to little over twenty million tons.
Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE declared himself a whole-hearted supporter of
nationalisation. There was something extraordinarily uplifting in the
notion of consecrating one's talents to the State. Publishers were too
often callous individualists. Here one would be working for humanity. If
his interview with the KAISER had been issued under State sanction he
believed that the Peace would have been signed months sooner.
* * * * *
OFFICIAL CANDOUR.
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