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The appearance retention of trouser creases, subject to tumble drying, for some trousers can be improved by the simple process of restraining the inner leg seam to the aligned outer seam of the trouser leg at a single point just below the crotch. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of this approach on crease retention during laundering for a variety of commercially available trousers of different fibre compositions and blends.

Trousers made from various fibres and blends were purchased at retail and were washed and tumble dried as received, or after treatment (e.g. to provide shrink resistance for wool trousers or to improve the level of permanent set in the crease), with one leg restrained while the other was free and the impact on crease retention assessed.

The findings indicate that the use of a restraint device provides the largest improvement to the crease appearance for trousers constructed from wool or wool blends with polyester. Some level of permanent set is necessary for the restraint to function and an improvement in crease rating of up to three points (AATCC 1‐5 scale) is possible after five laundry cycles.

An effective prototype trouser restraint device, suitable for use in a domestic environment was constructed based on two rare earth magnets and should allow the consumer to improve the appearance retention of trousers, particularly for those containing appreciable amounts of wool.

The method allows the consumer to improve the crease retention of wool containing trousers, beyond what is possible through industrial processes, by using a laundry aid (restraint).

RICHARD DE BURY'S prayer that war, the great enemy of the book and therefore of the library, be averted must have risen to the minds of some librarians recently. As we write these lines international relations seem to have reached a boding complexity unrivalled since 1939 and with potentialities for ill as great or even greater. By the time these words appear we hope sanity and a calmer spirit will prevail and that the Christmas we face as librarians may indeed be a happy one. However that may be, the many frustrations all development, including library development, have suffered in the past year, are not likely to be overcome soon. The 35 to 50 millions our interruption for good or ill in the Israel‐Egyptian affair has cost—a relatively small matter financially against our national annual spendings of thousands of millions—are not likely to make for library progress. Yet, paradoxically, our greater advances in modern times have been the outcome of conditions created it would seem by war. The Great World War showed the naked need of the public library service in a way that the previous seventy years of peaceful advocacy had failed to do. Even greater progress came out of the Second World War. What was lost in each of these catastrophes no one has been able to calculate.