The official appointment, which gives him absolute power over the public
life or death of a play, gives to the public no guarantee of his fitness
for the post. So far as the public can judge, he was chosen as the
typical "man in the street," the "plain man who wants a plain answer,"
the type of the "golden mean," or mediocrity. We hear that he is honest
and diligent, that he reads every word of every play sent for his
inspection. These are the virtues of the capable clerk, not of the
penetrating judge. Now the position, if it is to be taken seriously,
must require delicate discernment as well as inflexible uprightness. Is
Mr. Redford capable of discriminating between what is artistically fine
and what is artistically ignoble? If not, he is certainly incapable of
discriminating between what is morally fine and what is morally ignoble.
It is useless for him to say that he is not concerned with art, but with
morals. They cannot be dissevered, because it is really the art which
makes the morality. In other words, morality does not consist in the
facts of a situation or in the words of a speech, but in the spirit
which informs the whole work.
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