Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/293

slander their critics, and these slanders live for years in spite of refutation. Seven years ago they began to circulate a silly and obviously incredible charge that Professor Haeckel “forged” illustrations in support of his case, and, though the libel was at once thoroughly refuted by Professor Schmidt, it is still current. Only a few months ago I received from India documents which showed that the Jesuits there were still insisting on it. A friend of mine informed me that he heard one Scottish preacher, in the course of a public lecture on Haeckel, assure his audience, on the authority of a “friend of Haeckel’s,” that that venerable scientist was a man of most licentious life! No charge is too gross to repeat, if it discredits an “enemy of the faith.” Dozens of times I have heard of the wildest calumnies about myself which circulate throughout the English-speaking world, because I have occasionally written a critical work (always grossly misrepresented in the Catholic press) about the Catholic Church. I never belonged to the Catholic priesthood: I was discharged from it for fraud: I left it in order to marry a nun I had seduced: and so on. Only the lighter of these things are put in print, and then always with the name omitted. Only a few months ago a priest (and Education-Councillor) in a Scottish town gravely assured a schoolmistress, in the presence of an acquaintance of mine, that his Church held unshakable proofs of my vicious ways. As usual, my request that they would