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UNTIL the end of 1948 Mr. Nowell remains our President and his occupancy of the office has fulfilled all that we expected of him. It has been forceful and, we think, has left its mark upon us, his general statesmanship and complete sanity of outlook being shown whenever he had occasion to direct meetings or to speak to them. He does not now go into retirement as our past four presidents‐have done by the fiat of superannuation schemes ; he has what President Cashmore called the glory of going on for a number of years yet. He will therefore continue to exercise profound influence on public and other librarianship with the wisdom and power with which, as President, he has won general thanks.

THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties. Anything that Mr. Jast has to say is said with originality even if the subject is not original; his quality has always been to give an independent and novel twist to almost everything he touches. We think our readers will find this to be so when he touches the important question of “The Library and Leisure.”

HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

CONFERENCES are becoming difficult. Recently the chairman of the Ray Committee remarked that there were too many of them, and added that if they were held in Wigan rather than Bournemouth or such places they would not be well attended. The assumption is that we attend them for our pleasure only. We do find pleasure in them, but any delegate who goes through a Library Association Conference has done a week's work more strenuous than most men do in their busiest business weeks. In fact he is worked much too hard. Sir William Ray is too experienced a public man not to know why an assembly of several thousands of persons cannot descend on places which are without accommodation. In any case the Library Association has met in recent years in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, which have their amenities but are not exactly pleasure resorts.

MONTHS ago I met the editor of this journal in Melrose, Scotland, where, sharing a meal of bread and cheese, I promised to do a thing which I have consistently declined to do for years—write an article on books for the traveller.

IT is too early to examine what the change of Government may portend for libraries sustained attract malign attention from any party. We are aware enough, however, that a time of financial stringency lies ahead for every public activity. In book production, the restrictions on imports may worsen a position which is bad enough as it is. There may not be a sinister intention in the gesture of cutting the salaries of Cabinet Ministers by a sum which for several of them represents about £25 or about a half crown a week on such salaries as librarians earn. We hope there is not. Although all good Britons will make necessary sacrifices; but they want to be sure that they are necessary and not, as usually is the case, merely attacks on public servants. We are told that there will be no Geddes axe this time, but experience shows that the politician can always find a way of reversing a statement in what he imagines to be the public interest. Fortunately those likely to be affected are better organized than they were in the early twenties.

ONE or two questions raised by the writer of “Letters on our Affairs” this month are of some urgency. The first, the physical condition of books, is one that is long over‐due for full discussion with a view to complete revision of our method. The increased book fund of post‐war years, and the unexpected success of the twopenny library, have brought us to the point when we should concentrate upon beautiful and clean editions of good books, and encourage the public to use them. “Euripides” is quite right in his contention that there is too much dependence upon the outcasts of the circulating library for replenishing the stocks of public lending libraries. We say this gravely and advisedly. Many librarians depend almost entirely upon the off‐scourings of commercial libraries for their fiction. The result, of course, is contempt of that stock from all readers who are not without knowledge of books. It is the business of the public library now to scrap all books that are stained, unpleasant to the sight, in bad print, and otherwise unattractive. Of old, it was necessary for us to work hard, and by careful conservation of sometimes quite dirty books, in order to get enough books to serve our readers. To‐day this is no longer the case, except in quite backward areas. The average well‐supported public library—and there are many now in that category—should aim at a reduction of stock to proportions which are really useful, which are good and which are ultimately attractive if not beautiful. The time has arrived when a dirty book, or a poorly printed book, or a book which has no artistic appeal, should be regarded as a reproach to the library preserving it.

JUNE, from the enemy aerial view, has been a quiet month. Hitler, as was demonstrated on June 22nd, had turned his attention to Russia, and so more English libraries have not been added to his bag. The lull has given some of us a space in which to clear out debris and to get our damaged libraries more shipshape. In this, our new volume (Vol. xliv. No. 500), we glance rapidly back over a momentous year. It is difficult to realize that eleven months ago not a volume had been lost or a brick displaced in British libraries; that, in spite of the agony and triumph of Dunkirk, out attacks on Germany had been mainly of the paper kind; and that most, but by no means all, of our young librarians were still with us. The change has been great. True, the Battle of Britain, 1940, was won; but the night bomber introduced death and disaster unprecedented in this country, though well‐known in invaded lands. We went to bed at night hopeful and woke thankful, but not certain that there would be an awakening. Libraries suffered with other military objectives such as the small homes of suburban and country folk. We have been praised by our American brethren as heroic, and that is pleasant to hear, but we have not felt heroic; we have stood up to it because no other course is possible or thinkable. The problems of librarians in evacuation areas have been great; large numbers of their people migrated, and in some cases there were defence areas to which no visitor might go; falling revenues made existence almost impossible, and staffs were dismissed or transferred, the posts of librarians of years of service being endangered. Yet these sent out books for children in reception areas where, of their own kind, the problems were also great. Some libraries were overwhelmed by the demands made upon them, and although some towns (for example, Newton Abbot) have been prosperous beyond their experience as a result of the new settlers, the local authorities have had such “war economy” in their minds that they have been unwilling to do their obvious duty to libraries. This was, however, not universal. The year saw, unfortunately, the beginning of the new Roll of Honour for librarians, which in this case contains a few names of those killed in air raids over us; some, too, have been injured, although all, we believe, have now recovered. Active work has been done by many librarians for the Forces—some with a rather heavy loss of books. The Camps and Services Libraries movement, good as has been its limited activity, has not achieved much in the way of “libraries”. We have hopes, however. Everything is still, in most matters of the present and the future, in an undecided state—except the will to win through: that is universal and certain. The encouragement we receive from our American friends has been a heartening feature of a year of immense, and we believe hopeful, importance to men.

THIS was my first experience in my home country of a conference in a university campus, and an impressive experience it was too. Away from the attractions and allurements of sea and coast, I found it particularly conducive to study and reflection, for the atmosphere of learning was all around us in this red‐brick university, the prototype of a civic university, founded in 1900 and with a student population of nearly 5,000.

This was my first experience in my home country of a conference in a university campus, and an impressive experience it was too. Away from the attractions and allurements of sea and coast, I found it particularly conducive to study and reflection, for the atmosphere of learning was all around us in this red‐brick university, the prototype of a civic university, founded in 1900 and with a student population of nearly 5,000.