An Open Letter to Lord Beaverbook

12. Your editor—merely for the purpose of striking a foul blow at Mr. Crowley—has singled out from among his colleagues three ladies who have been noble and unselfish enough to renounce their professional careers in order to help in his work. These ladies are not British subjects, but your editor has identified them quite clearly to their professional, family, and private circles in England and America. He has been vile enough to accuse them, without one conceivable atom of justification, of practising public prostitution in foreign cities. “Whenever he needs money, and can- not get it from fresh victims, he sends them on the streets of Palermo or Naples to earn it for him. “He served once a prison sentence in America for procuring young girls for a similar pur- pose.” The last of these statements is a demonstrable lie, but it serves to make the first statement the more hurtful, gross and abominable. 13. In publishing that lie in the first instance— well knowing that he could not justify it—and in silently maintaining it under challenge, your — 14 —