CAMP LIBRARY WEEK.

Today a nation-wide campaign starts to raise "a million dollars for a million books for a million men." It is to continue throughout what has been dubbed Camp Library Week. The Library War Council appointed by the Secretary of War intends to erect a comfortable library and fill it with good books at each of the thirty-two cantonments and the numerous training camps. This short explanation of the Council's aim is enough in itself. We need bestow no elaborate praise on so worthy a motive for raising money, since he who wrote "We may live without books" has been proved remarkably presumptuous long since. Man must read and our army is composed of men, not animals.

The campaign in spite of the extensive publicity may not bear enough fruit unless each stay-at-home contributes his share. There is to be no individual canvass; no strenuous pursuit on the street. We are asked to give what we can at our public library or at any local bank. So it will be an easy thing to go through the week without giving one cent to the fund, and friends will be none the wiser. But it will be proportionately difficult to silence that bothersome conscience, which demands that we help to make spare hours of our soldiers a time in which they can better themselves. There are not many of us who are too poor to padlock our purses to such an extent that we cannot say we helped establish these libraries.