The Library World Volume 45 Issue 3

RUMOUR occupies so much of the human stage that the Editor of any library journal hesitates to do more than hope that the librarians he serves will be continuing their work uninterrupted by attack at the time his words reach them. This atmosphere is probably a part of the reason that actuates our correspondent Glaucon, whose Letter on Our Affairs this month is unusually virile in its attack upon those who would plan an after‐war world at a time when it is yet undecided whether or no there will be a world to plan. He represents a school of thought, if that name is not rather pedantic for these excellent critics, who believe that there should be no change while conflict continues and that to plan ahead of that is futile, because, as he argues, the men who will operate that world have not been called into consultation and cannot be at present. The experience of the past shows, too, that all such planning has been completely wasted effort; the coming generation would do what it thinks fit without reference to it. Finally he seems to think that when fighting ceases the men and women who survive will be so eager to get back to what they now believe to be their comfortable former state that that desire will overrule any schemes whatsoever.