An Open Letter to Lord Beaverbook

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 — 6 —