An Open Letter to Lord Beaverbook

Whenever he needs money, and cannot 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 purpose. Both statements are absolute lies. The first falsely and wantonly accuses identifi- able women of being enslaved prostitutes. The second falsely and wantonly accuses a well-known man of letters of being a proved felon. Taken together, they show that anonymous scoundrels, backed by the resources of a great newspaper organisation, can—in fact, as distinct from legal fiction—freely direct, against any man or woman who happens to be socially ill-protected, an unscrupulously untrue and in- decent campaign, which, judged by its effects, may be morally indistinguishable from murder. 3. This state of affairs constitutes a menace of unprecedented gravity against the life and work of every individual citizen, and against the very foundations of public morality. The allegation that a man has been imprisoned as a white slaver is as vitally damaging as any that can be made. — 3 —