Library Review

1941 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012902

READERS will understand that owing to the operation of the Censorship and to the fact that news travels slowly, it has not been possible to present anything like a complete record of libraries damaged or destroyed. In any case to do that was not our aim. All that was desired was to keep the library service here and in other free lands informed as to the result of enemy attack on institutions. This third series of reports is much of the same pattern as those already published in this magazine. The note from Coventry deals with prospective reorganisation, but since the note was received the city has suffered again.Editor, L.R.

SNAITH, STANLEY

1941 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012903

WHAT of the novelists The war has brought them a wonderful opportunity, a new world bursting with fresh, unhackneyed, living material for their pens. Will they take it Not yet perhaps. So far our Elder Novelists have pursued their even tenor with majestic disregard of the fact that the old world, their world, has collapsed on its foundations. But for the young writer who has the gift of clear sight, and can forge the right instrument of expression, there is no lack of matter. Aerial combats, minesweeping, A.A. gunnery, munition making, the work of fire services and the various A.R.P. organisations, evacuation and the new social conditions it has createdall this is of our time, it is history in the making. So far only John Strachey has broached it. For others, that excellent volume Their Finest Hour points the way. Here the narrators are unsophisticates, amateurs, but their sheer sincerity and the vividness of their subjectmatter make their essays compelling. The fireman's masterly understatement on arriving at the blazing inferno of the Docks Well, this is a bit of a the remark of Mrs. Hart of Bethnal Green, whose house had been bombed Our house doesn't look like much now Just a dirty heap for the dustman to carry awaythe pilot bawling into his radio phone Oh, look what's coming, dearie, hordes and hordes of nasty Messerschmittsthese things come with the sharp tang of reality, besides which the cultured cadences of the professional writer look shabby.

BENSON THORNE, W.

1941 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012904

JOHN Y. W. MacAlister was a wonderful honorary secretary and accomplished a great deal for the Library Association, obtaining its royal charter among other things. Very progressive in outlook, he was fruitful in suggestion for improving the library service in all sorts of ways, and his farreaching influence with important people enabled him to procure favours and concessions such as few others have ever been able to effect. For instance, when the Second International Library Conference was held at the Guildhall of the City of London in 1897, MacAlister secured the whole dress circle of the Lyceum for the delegates to see Sir Henry Irving in one of his most famous performances, and likewise arranged for every delegate to be accepted as an honorary fellow of the Savage Club while the Conference lasted. He read a paper at the Conference too, of which the following is his own characteristic synopsis