Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/393

370 it because masked men find it easier to waylay “brown” men than red-faced men?

“Ajax” writes:—

This is a misleading summary of what we wrote;—we never said or even suggested that budgets can be absolutely accurate. What we actually wrote will be found on pages 235-6 of our last issue, from which we extract only a short passage below:

The reference in the last sentence is to the fact that in the University budget it was estimated that the income from the sale of University publications would be Rs. 81,000, but it actually turned out to be Rs. 2,14,500! This difference between what was anticipated and what actually happened was spoken of by the introducer of the budget as a “windfall”; but “Ajax” seeks to account for the “windfall” by observing:

We were unaware of this abolition. But it does not seem to be an adequate explanation. A sole agent may get a commission of, say, 38 per cent. By abolishing the sole agency, some saving may have been effected, and let us also suppose that the Calcutta University can beat professional booksellers in pushing the sale of books. But can these facts account for an increase in the sale of books by more than one hundred and sixty-four percent? Some time ago we read in the papers that the University was refusing to sell its prescribed text-books to those book-sellers who would not purchase at the same time some other publications which were not prescribed as text-books. If this was a fact, this novel method of selling unsaleable books may account for the “windfall” to some extent.

“Ajax” expects the readers of the “Calcutta Review” to judge “whether it made the ’the publication of serial stories and other kinds of light literature and common-place popular illustrations some of its main features,’ and by mentioning the name of some distinguished contributors to that periodical, he seeks to suggest that it has not made a bid for subscribers who want generally to read light literature. It is a common trick of controversialists to put into the mouth of their antagonist things which he has not said and then controvert these quite easily. We never said that the “Calcutta Review” has not published any good articles of academic value. What we did say, and say again now, is that it has made “the publication of serial stories and other kinds of light literature and commonplace popular illustrations some of its main features.” We assert that this is literally true, as every honest reader of the “Calcutta Review” will bear witness. In further proof of this statement we quote the following from the notice published in No. 1, Vol. 1 of the series published by the Calcutta University:

“Short Stories, Poems, Portraits and Cartoons, besides articles of general interest. Fine Indian painting will be a special attraction.”

Why should cartoons be a special feature in a serious academic journal? The notice nowhere says that the “special features” will be papers of “academic value’. And why should technicalities be avoided in the journal of the Calcutta University?

As regards the finances of the “Calcutta Review,” “Ajax” says:

The public became entitled to have detailed information, because the income of the “Calcutta Review” was shown in the University budget, but not the expenditure. If the review be self-supporting, why is the budget significantly silent about the expenditure? The answer is not to be found in the writer’s cryptic words “For obvious reasons.”

“Ajax” writes;