Sir: In the public interest, we, the undersigned Australian authors and others vitally interested in Australian creative talent and the advancement of Australian art and literature, record our vigorous protest against the recent prosecution in Adelaide of one of the editors of the journal Angry Penguins for publishing "indecent, immoral, and obscene" writing.
A prosecution of such a kind is not in the public interest, and operates only to handicap and embarrass literary and artistic expression. Further, it brings the Australian community into ridicule. No sensible person would claim that Australian literary journals and publications have had any injurious effect upon the Australian moral standards, but, in any event, the common sense and experience of the public afford adequate safeguards. It is both the right and the duty of the artist to express honestly what he feels and sees in life, and freedom to do so is at the very root of humanity and genuine democracy. It is among the foremost freedoms which the United Nations are at war to preserve.
In signing this protest we are not committing ourselves in any way to an endorsement of the merit of the work appearing in Angry Penguins; we are concerned only to uphold the right of its contributors and pub- lishers to freedom of expression. (Signed):
JOHN V. BARRY, REG. S. ELLERY, HENRIETTA DRAKE - BROCKMAN, ADRIAN LAWLOR, JOHN MCKELLAR. J. K. MOIR, C. B. CHRISTESEN, C. R. BADGER, BRIAN FITZPATRICK, VANCE PALMER. NETTIE PALMER, ALAN MARSHALL, A. R. CHISHOLM. R. M. CRAWFORD. H. H. BURTON.
Sir: The recent prosecution of Angry Penguins on the grounds of obscenity is a slur on our cultural and democratic tradition, and must be denounced by all those to whom the Atlantic Charter's freedoms have any real meaning at all. Many people may disagree with the material to be found in this journal, but no qualified person can possibly dispute its claim to be treated as a serious literary production without the slightest tendency towards salacious or pornographic writing. As a contributor to a number of Australian publications, I can state emphatically that if Angry Penguins deserves to be prosecuted then the same thing undoubtedly applies infinitely more to nine-tenths of the magazines and books now to be found on every news-stand. - ALAN MARSHALL (Caulfield.)
First published in The Argus, 26 October 1944
[Thanks to the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation project for this piece.]
