The sun., 1919-05-18
CIR Etl1rartan'a Gnrnfr
CONDUCTED BY
FRANK PARKER STOcKBRIDGE.
MORE BOOKS FOR SOLDIERS!

States is asking its public to give books for ship
ment to the A. E. F. The American Library Asso-
citation is combing out the camp libraries on this
side in the effort to obtain additional volumes for
the men over there without impairng the useful
ness of the Libraries over here. From Washington
the A. L. A. sends out an appeal for another half
million volumes at once. That number is needed in
addition to the quarter of million or so that can
be gathered up from accessible collections.
There never anything like it. In little I'M
der two years the soldiers of the United States
Army have read-and in most cases have literally
"read to pieces" something like four million
books, and they still camoring for reading mat
ter. If we had not seen all of our preconceptions
dissipated and every known precedent smashed in
the course of Americas war activities we might
take time to marvel at this unprecedented fact But
it is merely another one of the things that could
not happen but that did happen.
Miscellany, Please.
There is nobody to-day, not even the most pessi-
mistic and conservative librarian who still believes
that ordinary, average American young men do not
read Close to half Of the men of the A. E. F. have
come back home, but here comes cable from Bur-
ton E. Stevenson, in charge of Library War Ser
vice in Europe: Demand for books unbelievably
great and supply inadequate Rush all possible ic-
ton and miscellaneous shipments" And here is an
extract from of his recent letters:
''The demand for miscellaneous books was never
great as it is now. 1 thoroughly trust that you
will continue to make the appeal in the larger cities
of the United States and try to get it through in
some way to the people that the men over here need
hooks NOV than thew have will hn
least six months, perhaps year, before We shall
dare to slacken efforts in this respect
This is the sort of letters the Paris headquarters
of the A. L. A. is gettng-ths from a soldier of the
Army of Occupation writing from Pommern, Ger
many:
"DEAR FRIEND
could you send some reading to a couple Of
Yanks in Germany where it IS impossible to get any
reading at allf If You can't ne all going bugs
couple Of magazines or something of the sort that
we could read and pass along to the rest of the
boys-any good, live stories at all would do
Hoping you can help us out and thanking you
in advance, l am, respectfully yours
''HARRY A. CoNBoY,
"Med. Dept. 5Sth U. S. Inf A. EFF"
From Vladivostok.
The call for books comes from our men all the
way from the west of Europe to the east of Asia.
In the same mail with the report that the Paris
book market was being secured for works in Eng
ish for the embarkation camp at Brest comes
letter from Professor Harry Clemons in charge Of
Library War Service at Vladvostok:
"To garage detachment in the country near
by sent case favored with works on gasoene en-
gines automobile guides and Williamson stories.
The Lieutenant in charge came in early the next
mOrninp and said he and bio mon bo5 boo,, ,lx,.z4
fighting fer the technical books on their subject He
said if we had books like that he wanted something
on refrigeration. He got it, The library at Vladi
vostok Professor Clemens reports, is unique in one
respect When he asked the army authorities for
an assistant in his central library he was assigned
German prisoner! "He uses English well, has
very good education and an astonishing knowledge
of books and appears to be an accurate and hard
worker" writes Professor Clemens, whose peace
time job is professor of English at the University
of Marking; he adds, with library in China pre-
cidad nv Chpnca