...
Sir William Butler said, "the Celt is the spearhead of the British
lance."
He mentions the news from the African war, which had been favorable to
England, and what a change had come over everything in consequence. The
dinner-parties had been lodges of sorrow and depressing. Now everybody
was smiling again. In a note-book entry of this time he wrote:
Relief of Mafeking (May 18, 1900). The news came at 9.17 P.M.
Before 10 all London was in the streets, gone mad with joy. By then
the news was all over the American continent.
Clemens had been talking copyright a good deal in London, and introducing
it into his speeches. Finally, one day he was summoned before a
committee of the House of Lords to explain his views. His old idea that
the product of a man's brain is his property in perpetuity and not for
any term of years had not changed, and they permitted him to dilate on
this (to them) curious doctrine. The committee consisted of Lords
Monkswell, Knutsford, Avebury, Farrar, and Thwing. When they asked for
his views he said:
"In my opinion the copyright laws of England and America need only the
removal of the forty-two-year limit and the return to perpetual copyright
to be perfect. I consider that at least one of the reasons advanced in
justification of limited copyright is fallacious--namely, the one which
makes a distinction between an author's property and real estate, and
pretends that the two are not created, produced, or acquired in the same
way, thus warranting a different treatment of the two by law.
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