The Little Apocalypse of Obadiah Hornbrook

"If this war is about anything at all, it is a war in favour of freedom of thought."

We published last week part of a very truculent letter about the anti-war poem entitled ‘The Little Apocalypse of Obadiah Hornbrook’, with the comment, ‘I am surprised that you publish it.’ Other letters and private comments took the same line. I do not, any more than our correspondent, agree with ‘Obadiah Hornbrook’, but that is not a sufficient reason for not publishing what he writes. Every paper has a policy, and in its political sections it will press that policy, more or less to the exclusion of all others. To do anything else would be stupid. But the literary end of a paper is another matter. Even there, of course, no paper will give space to direct attacks on the things it stands for. We wouldn’t print an article in praise of antisemitism, for instance. But granted the necessary minimum of agreement, literary merit is the only thing that matters.

Besides, if this war is about anything at all, it is a war in favour of freedom of thought. I should be the last to claim that we are morally superior to our enemies, and there is quite a strong case for saying that British imperialism is actually worse than Nazism. But there does remain the difference, not to be explained away, that in Britain you are relatively free to say and print what you like. Even in the blackest patches of the British Empire, in India, say, there is very much more freedom of expression than in a totalitarian country. I want that to remain true, and by sometimes giving a hearing to unpopular opinions, I think we help it to do so.

First published in Tribune, 28 July 1944.

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