The day after the refusal of the Committee to face my statement, I
transferred the scene of action to the columns of The Times, which did
yeoman's service to the public on this, as on many other occasions, by
treating the question as a public one without the least regard to the
supposed susceptibilities of the Court on the one side, or the avowed
prejudices of the Free Churches or the interests of the managers or
theatrical speculators on the other. The Times published the summarized
conclusions of my statement, and gave me an opportunity of saying as
much as it was then advisable to say of what had occurred. For it must
be remembered that, however impatient and contemptuous I might feel of
the intellectual cowardice shewn by the majority of the Committee face
to face with myself, it was none the less necessary to keep up its
prestige in every possible way, not only for the sake of the dignity and
importance of the matter with which it had to deal, and in the hope that
the treatment of subsequent witnesses and the final report might make
amends for a feeble beginning, but also out of respect and consideration
for the minority. For it is fair to say that the majority was never more
than a bare majority, and that the worst thing the Committee did--the
exclusion of references to particular plays--was perpetrated in the
absence of the Chairman.
I, therefore, had to treat the Committee in The Times very much better
than its majority deserved, an injustice for which I now apologize. I
did not, however, resist the temptation to hint, quite good-humoredly,
that my politeness to the Committee had cost me quite enough already,
and that I was not prepared to supply the members of the Committee, or
anyone else, with extra copies merely as collectors' curiosities.