There is no worse censorship
than one which considers only the feelings of the spectators,
except perhaps one which considers the feelings of people who do
not even witness the performance. Take the case of the Passion
Play at Oberammergau. The offence given by a representation of
the Crucifixion on the stage is not bounded by frontiers:
further, it is an offence of which the voluntary spectators
are guilty no less than the actors. If it is to be tolerated at
all: if we are not to make war on the German Empire for
permitting it, nor punish the English people who go to Bavaria to
see it and thereby endow it with English money, we may as well
tolerate it in London, where nobody need go to see it except
those who are not offended by it. When Wagner's Parsifal becomes
available for representation in London, many people will be
sincerely horrified when the miracle of the Mass is simulated on
the stage of Covent Garden, and the Holy Ghost descends in the
form of a dove. But if the Committee of the Privy Council, or the
Lord Chamberlain, or anyone else, were to attempt to keep
Parsifal from us to spare the feelings of these people, it would
not be long before even the most thoughtless champions of the
censorship would see that the principle of doing nothing that
could shock anybody had reduced itself to absurdity. No quarter
whatever should be given to the bigotry of people so unfit for
social life as to insist not only that their own prejudices and
superstitions should have the fullest toleration but that
everybody else should be compelled to think and act as they do.
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