The Library World Volume 24 Issue 7 Available to Purchase

Our contributor who reports the proceedings at the meeting of the Library Association at Westminster last month laments their intangibility and inconclusive character. Nevertheless, we venture to believe that meetings which bring before him the observations of such distinguished men as Mr. J. C. Squire and Mr. Hugh Walpole are of high value to the librarian who desires to know how his work impresses other men, and so to shape it that it may impress them more satisfactorily. Delightful as was Mr. Walpole's address on the occasion in question, it showed that the brilliant novelist, like most other Britons, has gone abroad to see with clear eyes what he has failed to notice in the next street at home. This is characteristic. We remember hearing Mr. Francis Bond, of architectural fame, remark that people go to France again and again to enthuse over the cathedrals there who are totally unaware that there is nothing in France more beautiful, if as beautiful, as the Angel Choir in Lincoln Cathedral. The analogy need not be pushed too far, but the fact did emerge that Mr. Walpole found the Americans so enthusiastic that they “rushed him to see the public library.”