The sun., 1919-02-23
BY FRANK P. sTocKBRIDGE.

what sort of literature appealed to the
able bodied Young men of America.
Library statistics of circulation are not
classified by age and sex of readers; book
sellers are similarly lax. Whether young
men read at all was almost moot ques-
ton as revealed by the records of the dis
cussions at meetings of library associa-
tons held in those early days when the
experiment of Library War Service was
under consideration.
Some held that they didn't read at all,
except the Saturday Erening- Post and
Popular Mechanics. Others believed they
might be tempted by, sufficiently blood
thirsty collection of works of the Dead
rood Dick and Old Cop Collier variety.
That the day would ever come when it
was simply impossible to obtain enough
copies of Kipling and Shakespeare, Of
the atlantic and Worlds Work, to satisfy
the demands of 5000, 600 young American
men, nobody dreamed.
What the Soldiers Want.
/ have just seen the list of titles in the
collection of half million volumes espe-
cially purchased for immediate overseas
shipment to meet the reading need Of our
army of occupation. The selection is based
upon nearly two years experience of
thousand and more Librarians who have
served the American soldier in camp and
field, in America and in Europe, with
books. These books have been selected in
the light of that experience; they are
books the American Library Association
knOus these American young men want
to read and will read. And here are few
of the Starred titles-the star indicating
that the maximum number of these VOL
umes is included in the collection:
Atlantic Classics, first and second series;
Burners Short Sires, Chesterton's VIC
tOridn Age Of English Literature, Paul
Laurence Dunbar's Complete Poems,
Maurice Hewlett's Richard Yea and Ndy
o. Henry's The Four Million, Kipling's
Collected Verse aud Jungle Book, collec-
tions of poems by Longfellow, Lowell,
Masefield, Robert w. Service, Robert
Louis Stevenson, Tennyson, Whittier and
Wordsworth, Shakespeare works, SCOTS
novels, Mark Twain's immortal Huckle-
berry Finn and Tom SdWyer.
Some Best Sellers"
There have Just been bought thousand
copies of The -Four Horsemen Of the
4 pocalypSe for our soldiers overseas, as
many of A. Maurice Lows Woodrow
Wilson and Jacob Riis's Theodore ROose-
relt, an equal number of John w. Fosters
A Century Of american Diplomacy.
Shades of Nick Garter! Is this high
brow army?
1t is-not It is just cross section of
young American manhood and it reads
just the sort of things that appeal to the
average American young man, including
Harold Bell Wright, Robert W. Chambers
and George Barr McCutcheon. 1t will be
possible to compile from the reports of
camp and hospital Librarians that have
been sent to Library War Service head
quarters and the accompanying book
orders lists OF titles that can almost De
guaranteed to popularize with young men
any library that will stock them all. For,
after eliminating the very large class Of
books dealing directly with the war, the
books which our soldiers have read to per-
feet themselves in the trade of soldering
and the books they ask for to help them
fit themselves for better jobs when they
get back to civil life there remains a mass
of information, statistical and otherwise,
that when finally digested and classified
will be fairly complete index to the read
ing tastes of average American young
sters. 1t hasn't been classified yet. But
one can project pretty accurate picture
from the data already at hand, the book
orders, the letters of the librarians, the
letters of the men themselves asking for
books.