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The death of Andrew Carnegie has removed one of the greatest constructive figures in the social economy of the world. A man of humble origin, who gained his privileges and power by genius and industry, he recognized the drawbacks from which his youth suffered, and sought to remove them for other people. The making of his wealth was a romance, not always in the most pleasant strain perhaps, but with that we can only be concerned indirectly. What does concern us was that he was the outstanding example of the man of great wealth who returns the money he has won from the community to the community. The library movement in this country and in America owes its greatest impetus to his consistent liberality, and his name and fame are secure.

THE problem that Dr. E.A. Savage introduced in our last issue may well be one of the crucial debates of this winter. When it is remembered that there was a time, as our writer in Letters on Our Affairs asserts, when it was thought inadvisable for a public librarian to be Hon. Secretary of the Library Association, we can see that times have changed. There is no doubt that the Brighton Conference showed the impossibility of adequate discussion of purely professional matters when authority members are present. The manner of achieving what many desire, and yet to retain the goodwill' of intelligent authority members, is what has to be determined.

SEPTEMBER sees the irrevocable passing of summer and the inevitable looking forward to autumnal plans. Such plans must be made, even in the shadows of this world situation, which as we write are as menacing as they have been since war began, and before these words appear another fourteen of the sixty days which Mr. Lyttleton warned us would be the gravest in our history will have elapsed. That leaves a formidable margin for possibilities. Librarians, as deeply involved as any people in the conflict, must nevertheless act as if the work of life will go on, even if not as in peace. Our difficulties do not lessen; more and more of our lads and girls, and some rather beyond the age these words cover, are being removed from libraries; the book situation worsens; and the demands for books increase, especially in what until recently were evacuation areas, to which many of our exiles have now returned.

Yes; “the friendliest library in the world” is Joseph Hone's description of the National Library of Ireland, and according to Stephen Gwynn it was under “one of the most enthusiastic librarians the world has known”. They wrote of a time when Thomas W. Lyster, Dr. R. I. Best and William Kirkpatrick Magee were that Library's eager hosts. Happily Dr. Best and Mr. Magee are with us. It is my misfortune not to have met them. But Lyster I knew well; he was my friend, as far as friendship is possible to men who meet only at Conferences, and when all the approaches must come from the “don”.

In the library field “who fears to speak of ‘ 98”—1898?, By that year 390 authorities had adopted the Libraries Acts. Public librarians had a permanent majority in the Library Association. The Library ceased to be the official organ, which it had been for a decade, though John Y. W. MacAlister owned it. MacAlister resigned the honorary secretaryship of the Library Association which he had brilliantly and gaily served for eleven years. The Library Association Record was planned to replace The Library in January 1899. Duff Brown founded The Library World. He published his Adjustable Classification. The first winter classes for course teaching in librarianship were inaugurated by Bishop Mandell Creighton. The Library Association became a chartered corporation. The Assistants’ Association founded The Library Assistant.

The late Harold Laski in Liberty and the Modern State (p. 168) tells us that in “our own day it would not be an unfair description of education to define it as the art which teaches men to be deceived by the printed word.” Extend the aphorism to the spoken word. Sobald man spricht beginnt man schon zu irren. And so to deceive! After Hitler the Germans should remember their own maxim again! Broadcasting, television, preaching, lecturing, and political parrotry mislead even more than print. Pleasant voice, winning manner, a sparkle in the eye, a flash in the phrase, mask many a glib bunkum‐stuffer. The flying air‐borne sentence is less easy to interrogate than the ink‐bound paragraph. Does not Dr. Johnson somewhere growl that he could see quicker than he could hear?

A NEW L.A. exam syllabus is now in force. Some faults of the old head‐screw remain. Notably that bag o' bones which has rattled dryly down the wind ever since our exams began: Eng. Lit. from Beowulf to the Sitwells in one three‐hour paper with ne'er a scrape of marrow. Chartered “liberians” with no more Literature than a Hottentot—to celebrate our centenary! Another fault is the division into unequal periods of Literature for the Final. But perhaps Chaucer House would lack character without a grinning hoodoo to bedevil Literature. On the whole the syllabus has more strength and accommodation. Signs are that sense does penetrate: for examples, examining classification and cataloguing together, the study of named reference books, and encouragement to more varied librarianship.

Once upon a time an evil spirit made a librarian invent an indicator, blue in, red out. No artist in statistic hyperbole could chart the mischief that jig‐saw did, and only a politician crafty in knotted rigmarole would try to explain it away. In my youth most home‐reading dens and many public library boxes were built round that fetish of primitive librarianship; the staff played run‐rabbit‐run between skyscraper stacks, a tin curtain, and a wash‐and‐brush‐up hole. An old story? … but the bad results are with us yet. We developed den and box mentality. When stock outgrew indicator, many books got out of the printed catalogue into reference or cellar, much the same fate then—and now. The process thinned stock for the few and fattened that for the many; the holy issue was kept from falling, and more of the uneducated were miseducated. Old red‐blue presided over the burial of the founders' ideals, and long after it was thrown to scrap they remained interred. A few have been exhumed lately, just when our bitter war heritage stays their realization or makes it impossible. Den and box are still with us, to astonish the sun. Not many centrals, like those at Manchester and Sheffield, were so bad that even between the wars they had to be replaced. Elsewhere centrals not quite so inimical to good work‐had to be put up with; never worthy of the people's deserts, they should now pass to the housebreakers.

But for the firmness of its Executive Committee some thirty years ago and for the good offices of Salter Davies, a Carnegie United Kingdom trustee, the Library Association very soon might be homeless, back to the days of roughing it in one lodging after another. Col. Mitchell, the Trustees' Secretary, had promised a freehold site in Central London and a grant towards a building. So assured, and with his co‐operation, for months we had tramped in a widening circle round about the British Museum in search of a freehold where few remained.

EVERY librarian in his inmost heart dislikes newspapers. He regards them as bad literature; attractors of undesirable readers; a drain upon the limited resources of the library; and a target against which the detractors of public libraries are constantly battering. From the standpoint of the librarian, newspapers are the most expensive and least productive articles stocked by a library, and their lavish provision is, perhaps, the most costly method of purchasing waste‐paper ever devised. Pressure of circumstances and local conditions combine, however, to muzzle the average librarian, and the consequence is that a perfectly honest and outspoken discussion of the newspaper question is very rarely seen. In these circumstances, an attempt to marshal the arguments for and against the newspaper, together with some account of a successful practical experiment at limitation, may prove interesting to readers of this magazine.