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This paper studies the profit efficiency of a sample of large U.S. commercial banks and explores how this performance varies with selected measures of bank risk reflecting aspects of credit risk, liquidity risk, and insolvency risk. We use a standard profit function and the stochastic frontier approach, and compare two standard functional forms – Cobb‐Douglas and translog – to assess the tradeoff between precision and parsimony. We find that profit efficiency is sensitive to credit risk and insolvency risk but not to liquidity risk or to the mix of loan products.

The purpose of this paper is to address the established dilemma of action versus intent as explanations of the basis of ethical behaviour. In essence it aims to pose the question “If one had a choice between an executive who acted from cold calculated intent, and behaved ethically as it was profitable – compared to someone with excellent intent who consistently got it ethically wrong – who would you choose – the psychopathic ethicist or the well‐intentioned bumbler?”. The intended contribution of this paper is to add some further considerations to that debate.

This paper notes the basic dilemma of moral choice, action or intent: it also adds to the debate by a consideration of several lesser points, including different meanings of “outcome” and the awareness that morals refer to an underpinning value choice. Its analytic path touches short‐term versus long‐term perspectives, commonsense, the theoretical debate, idealism and utilitarianism, equitability, morals and the law, morality and genes, unintended consequences and paradox of compliance.

The paper acknowledges that moral values are values that may be derived from wider elements, and that moral choices are such that they should be expressed in principles that transcend special times, place, or special pleading. There is an expressed need for consistency of approach.

The debate, still alive and well, needs to extend to include contemporary issues. The present writers are inclined to the view that a raised awareness of the issue, and its application to real life situations, is critical. The discussed issues would certainly benefit from further speculation.

Morals must operate in a real world, and that clearly implies desirable outcomes: good intent is recognised as powerful – but does not do as much to foster moral behaviour as does an orientation to outcome. It is such qualifications that need to be borne in mind when considering the complementary roles of moral decision making in any context, including that of business and of crime. It is hoped that directorial and managerial decisions will be invested with this understanding.

The major contributions that this paper seeks to make is that the distinction between intent and consequences may be a false dichotomy; that the notion of outcome has more than one meaning; and that so often our intentions have paradoxical outcomes.

AN ESTEEMED correspondent points out that there are about two dozen library magazines of all sorts and sizes in circulation, whereas when he started his career there were no more than three. Our correspondent has himself had considerable editorial experience, and it may be that he is still in harness in that regard. One of his earliest efforts was in running the magazine of the old Library Assistants' Association, and it is not likely that that magazine has ever reached the same heights of excellence as it attained in his day. He observes that there are far too many library magazines now in circulation. We agree.

WE wish our readers success and prosperity for 1935. In the pages of our last number was given a brief retrospect of the events of 1934, and there is no advantage in repeating any part of it. Suffice to say, the year was one of the most memorable in the annals of libraries from the point of view of the new buildings which have been erected to serve great places. The year before us will present a full programme of work for all librarians. The major interest will probably be the conference to be held at Manchester in September, when hundreds of librarians will have the opportunity of seeing the building of the largest of British, if not of European, public libraries. We understand, too, that the conference will deal systematically with the efficient library in the modern community, but no doubt fuller information upon this programme will be forthcoming very shortly. The time is not ripe, we fear, for us to expect anything in the shape of a consolidating library aft which shall bring into coherency the scattered library laws of this country. We hope something will be done in the year to improve the examination system of the Library Association, which fails to give satisfaction as it stands at present. We confidently expect that the co‐operation embodied in the Regional Library Bureau will be extended, and as our recent pages have shown, we hope that the National Central Library will be relieved of some of its financial anxieties by direct action upon the part of public libraries and of the Treasury. There are signs that the country is gradually returning to prosperity, and we hope that in any such event libraries will benefit and librarians will receive some attention in the matter of their salaries.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

DAMAGE to libraries has assumed dimensions which make it unlikely that any private beneficence alone will be able to effect restoration. Nor is it probable that we have reached anything like the end of the destruction. Libraries are in the nature of things in great centres of population which are main targets of the enemy and they suffer accordingly. There is every hope that after the war the most determined effort will be made to repair every form of loss, and the libraries must be kept well to the fore by those who have charge of them; but the effort, in which we certainly hope such benevolent institutions as the Carnegie and similar trusts will assist, must be a universal one. It will also be considered a state obligation, we hope, based partly upon the State Insurance Scheme. In connexion with this, some librarians have had difficulty in persuading their authorities to insure books for anything like the money it would cost to replace them; it is curious that public men appear to think that books cost little or nothing! A reflection of this from the other side was the remark of a District Valuer on a claim for damage which certainly could not replace the lost books, that it was “excessive.” Cover should certainly be adequate.

IPSWICH gave an interesting lead to the libraries of this country in its Book Week, which occurred last month. By a wise co‐operation between the National Book Council, the Local Booksellers and the Public Library, two book exhibitions—one of new publications in the local Y.M.C.A., and the other of book‐making processes at the Public Library—were held, and lectures at the Library by Sir Ernest Benn, representing publishers; Mr. Maurice Marston, booksellers; Messrs. G. A. Stephen and Berwick Sayers, librarians; and Mr. Michael Sadleir, authors, attracted good audiences. Posters of a most original kind “declared war” on the ignorance of the value of books in the town. The affair must have stimulated reading to some extant in Ipswich; and we hope it may find imitators elsewhere.

IT SEEMS THAT librarians, in common with many other forms of mankind, do not learn from history. One of the more interesting sessions of the recent La Public Librarians' Conference in Aberdeen dealt with the need for many more librarians in school libraries, and the kind of qualifications which would best fit them for the work. Clearly, professional training in librarianship and knowledge of the educational process are both relevant and valuable.

OCTOBER brings the full swing of winter's activities. Students have gone to their classes again, library meetings take place—not the least of them the London and Home Counties Branch annual conference, this time at Margate, which has just concluded—and, at the end of the month, the annual election of the L.A. Council. The interest, probably the quality, of a librarian can be gauged by his attitude towards these things. One who does not vote for his Association Council has no right to criticise its acts, and he who does not support, at least reasonably, the meetings his Association arranges, lacks the loyalty which every profession has a right to expect of its members. October 15 is the final date of entry for the December professional examinations. It will be noted, too, that this year the Entrance examination takes place on Wednesday, November 26—a fortnight before the Registration first group.

The purpose of this article is to explore how the (War) Advertising Council organized the advertising community to assist the US government's home front campaigns during the Second World War. It aims to discuss how the council urged individual advertisers to use their product‐ads to instruct the civilian population about behavioral changes that the government deemed essential to the war effort. The task required great ambidexterity: paying a high level of attention to the government's wartime needs while coaching and encouraging advertisers into compliance. As such, the article also aims to discuss the council's challenge in weighing the government's wartime needs against commercial pressures. A case study of the Advertising Council's 1944 campaign to “Stamp out VD” seeks to illustrate the latter concern.

The article comprises an historical account of the US advertising industry during the Second World War. Applying a qualitative approach, it relies on archival sources, industry trade publications, newspapers accounts and existing scholarship for its information.

While publicly framing its wartime contribution as a patriotic gesture, the council's underlying rationale was that of serving the advertising industry in a public relations capacity. Unsure of its standing as America entered the war, the donation of time and talent to the government's war effort helped strengthen the advertising industry's economic position and social standing. As such, the council was not only a pioneer of “social marketing”, but also demonstrated a sophisticated use of “strategic philanthropy,” long before it became a common marketing practice.

Analyzing previously un‐explored sources, the article sheds new light on the US advertising industry's public relations strategies during the Second World War.