The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-02-09
BOOKS AS NEWS.

you maven anything on those SuD1ectS
please send book on the ancient history of
Greece or Rome Anything of that sort will be news
to me- So wrote soldier, an officer of the A. E.
F., to the American Library Association central
library in Paris
Nothing could more navely illustrate the theme
of books news nothing more forcibly bring home
to one the knowledge hunger of the ordinary Ameri-
can, his imagination has been fired and his
curiosity stimulated by adventure beyond the Dor
ders of his home town.
And even the million and half young Ameri-
whose life in khaki took them further than
environment or training camp have had a Great Ad-
venture They have travelled hundreds perhaps
thousands of miles seen strange cities and perhaps
different cline, mingled with tens of thousands
of others, of various and tongues, various
habits and points Of view, formed friendships
and acquired manners. The Spirit of Adven-
ture has been implanted in their souls. Having seen
so much they did not know existed they want to
know more of what was before TO them unknown.
1t is from the ranks of these and the 100000
others who went overseas that Adventure will re-
eruit her legions of pioneers to explore and open
up the Businesses of Earth's remOtest bounds Many
more, having tasted the life of the crowd, will
seek the big cities rather than their village homes;
already New York is swarming with returned SOL
diers from the South and West who have cashed in
their transportation home and are looking for Jobs
in the metropolis But even those who 90 back to
the humdrum routine of factory farm will see
life hereafter from viewpoint and will
hardly be content TO LET it flow past them without
at least such tastes of at second hand, it were
as they may get from books.
Truth Hunters
Most of us, indeed, however bravely may have
tn in, ind
like Lowell s lovers Of truth, who
" lavish d life S best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
t';ontent, at last for guerdOn of their toll,
With the east mantle she hath left behind her'
Once having tasted, however, We cannot but con-
inue to seek and small part Of the work that the
circumstance of war has charted for the public
libraries of America is to facilitate the search Of
those whO having tasted of the Great Adventure OF
living, must now perforcc content themselves with
such news of it may be found in books
Recruits for Libraries.
Not ALL of course, will at once or ever be active
users of their home town libraries, though every
man who served under the Stars and Stripes knows
now, if he never knew before, what libraries are
and what they have for him. Some, Oh the other
hand doubtless will recrnit the ranks of those
library habitues, usually bearded and often IN
kempt, upon whose patronage nice young lady
library assistants frown but who, TO me, always
like true advdnturers seeking vicariously to
live again the lives they lived, would have lived
had not Fate dccreed otherwise, in their youths.
But lin between is the great maSs--mons-
whose eyes have been opened through travel and
contacts to the knowledge that men live and deeds
are done in lands and ways that once they knew
not of, and who seek to add to that knowledge and
turn it to advantage in their workaday lives. These
are the new patrons the libraries must find ways to
serve.