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agent of better and wiser men--men whom the country cannot venture to
laugh at.
I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (and if
he should ask me to sit down and frame the paragraph for him I should
blush--but still I would frame it.)
Next I would get a prime leader in Congress: I would also see that votes
enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was
offered. This I would try through my leader and my friends there.
And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with
noble enthusiasm, "American lawmakers do steal but not from foreign
authors--Not from foreign authors!"
You see, what I want to drive into the Congressional mind is the simple
fact that the moral law is "Thou shalt not steal"--no matter what Europe
may do.
I swear I can't see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit
of American booksellers, anyway.
If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making
copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it,
since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright
term--no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his
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