to the man, and to the impersonal cause of art 
and letters—which can never by any possibility 
be remedied. 
Your editor’s lie has wrought the havoc, and 
more. 
In France, my Lord, as you are doubtless 
aware, any man attacked in a newspaper has 
the legal right to reply in its columns, and his 
reply must be printed in the same type and in 
the same place as the original attack.  This 
law is admirably just and wise.  Its effect has 
been to put a complete stop, in France, to this 
plague of anonymous defamation, whether used 
as the instrument of journalistic blackmail, or 
simply as a form of profitable sensationalism.  
The present case shows how a man of letters, 
unprotected by this right of reply, can be sub-
jected by a newspaper editor to public foul-play 
of the most atrocious and murderous kind. 
 
5.  At the beginning of July 1922—while 
Mr. Crowley was still living in London, and 
months before this campaign of lies was mooted—
he signed a contract with his publishers for the 
writing and production of his autobiography.  
This was commenced in London, and was well 
under way, when at the end of October, Mr. 
Crowley left England for his home in Sicily.  
A fortnight later the Sunday Express commenced 
its campaign of lies by printing a biography 
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