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SIR JOHN SQUIRE once said, ‘The man who attempts to survey the writings of Belloc will think he is undertaking the literary history of a small nation’. And, with that wise comment in mind, these few remarks in commemoration of Hilaire Belloc's birth centenary will be mainly focused on the man himself, as far as that is possible.

GRIT AND FORTITUDE have long been associated with the Scottish character, but it is doubtful if any Scotsman ever won through to success after such a grim struggle, as did Robert Chambers who died a century ago on March 17th.

NO TRIBUTE to the gallant R. M. Ballantyne could have been greater than the action of the boys of Harrow School who, upon receiving the news of his death in 1894, spontaneously decided to start a collection so that a monument might be erected to perpetuate his fame. To them, as indeed to so many nineteenth‐century boys, Ballantyne was that admirable man who had provided them with the sort of adventure stories for which they craved.

THE LIFE OF JAMES BALLANTYNE, Scottish printer, is so interlaced with those of his brothers, John and Sandy, and with the misfortunes of Sir Walter Scott, that it is impossible to give any sort of account of him as a single personality. He was bedevilled by influences that twisted what might have been a prosperous career into a condition that came to near financial disaster.

WALTER DE LA MARE, the centenary of whose birth falls on 25th April, was a master of English prose as well as being the supreme lyric poet of his age in the tradition of Campion, Herrick and Bridges. Yet it is difficult to compare him with anyone who has gone before, so highly individual was his work.

This paper was read at the Library Association Conference, Resource Centres in Schools, at Loughborough University of Technology in October 1971. It describes some of the more sophisticated American Resource Centres and deals with a situation a step or two away from general practice in this country. The author reports what he saw and how the centres are used, and so perhaps suggests both where and where not to aim in developing Resource Centres here.

AS WE RETREAT ever deeper into ourselves from the chaos around us—security chains on each door, ‘I spy’ peepholes obtained on mail order through Exchange and Mart in the upper panels, anti‐rape courses for women the latest thing—it is the mildest of consolations to notice that in the world of the once‐silver screen goodies remain after a fashion goodies and baddies are unalterably the people from the other side of the tracks. This, and perhaps only this, can explain the way local cinema managers held on, week after week in some cases, to The Death Wish, in which Charles Bronson plays the average, if also tougher than average, citizen who turns one‐man vigilante to avenge the mugging of his wife and daughter. Bronson is not, of course, at the very best of times the nicest of characters: we recall that in The Stone Killers he was the cop who, had he not been a cop, would have been Public Enemy No. 1. He is said to be in box‐office terms the most profitable actor in the world: as Saigon died, his menacing figure looked down even there from the abandoned cinemas. Eye for an eye moralities are neither new nor localized: but it is instructive that amidst change so pervasive, such attitudes are with us still.

THE summer is not a good time for writing editorials. In the first place it has been too warm, but more particularly, no matter how hot the topic at the time of writing, it will be cold as mutton before it eventually reaches its readers. Secondly our thoughts seem to have been devoted to anything except libraries: a little light reading perhaps, or a gentle discussion of next season's lecture programme? So now, not an editorial proper (or improper), but some editorial miscellany, beginning with the late but unregretted printing dispute. The LIBRARY WORLD has not been affected as much as some periodicals, and this issue makes its appearance only some three weeks later than planned. We have occasionally encountered comments which suggest that our journal is not anticipated each month with undue pleasure, and is quickly placed on the Chief Librarian's desk, from which honourable position its subsequent circulation is frequently delayed. Many libraries do not appear to have a professional journal circulation scheme, and this is a regrettable state of affairs. It is important that the younger members of the profession should be well informed about library affairs, and only the regular perusal of periodicals can achieve this. May we recommend that Chiefs institute and maintain a circulation programme in their libraries; we hear that it is much appreciated in those libraries which already do so.

THE RELICS OF A WRITER, his manuscripts, typescripts and memorabilia, have no life of their own, but they give life: they generate and resurrect. Too often they are abused, their products peddled to advance a thesis of no virtue, but this is the nature of things. Yet without them, properly handled, as they should be in an archive, there is no revelation: and not just for scholars either, less for them than for those who love O'Hara. Just a contemplation of them can bring some of him back to those who love and have some inkling of the concern and the care he had for his craft and his creation. He was a concerned man; he had a conscience. He sought and engaged the craft and sullen nature of his gift until it became as much a part of him as his fist. It became as much a part of him as his mind and body; it became his life. No photostat, microform, information retrieval can ever, will ever, replace the true relics, so that the place that holds them becomes for all who need or desire them a singular place, a side altar as well as a memorial. This is both meet and proper, for John O'Hara was a religious writer. He was not unique in this—all good writers are, one way or another—but he was one, especially; a moralist, in a Brooks Brothers shirt, in his bespoke shoes off Peal Brothers. Writing was his rod and his staff. To die in harness, shining in use, was his good luck that we must be thankful for. Requiescat in Pace, as he wrote of Philip Barry, another of them, in his dedication to him of The Farmers Hotel, a book that notched me. O'Hara knew what he was about. He was like one who keeps the deck by night, bearing the tiller up against his breast; he was like one whose soul was centred quite in holding course although so hardly pressed. And veers with veering shock now left now right,

The globalisation of the world economy has left governments less powerful and threatened cultures with homogenisation. The Huntington thesis – that the world is now divided into rival civilisations and that they are likely to be the source of the next round of world conflicts – may seem weak in the light of this. In fact many people fear that economic efficiency will produce a single culture and, because it will be dominated by hotly competing corporations with little restraint, will threaten civility itself. R.G. Collingwood even argued that economics as a practical science threatens civilisation by its very existence. This paper argues that, if one takes seriously Collingwood’s own distinction between wealth and riches, and if a co‐operative economy can be made to flourish, civilisation can readily survive. Wealth in these terms is a community resource which frees up human possibilities, riches are personal barricades and a source of power, and we can understand how to maximise wealth without creating unnecessary riches. In these terms the three main competing civilisations – that of the West, that of Islam, and the Chinese civilisation which is exemplified, for instance in Taiwan, may well survive and remain distinct. They represent basic human choices. For one can have societies in which the major focus is on individuals, societies in which it is on the community as a whole, and societies in which it is on families, social groups, churches and other institutions which comprise civil society.