VARIOUS BEQUESTS MADE TO WIDENER COLLECTION

Mr. W. B. Kurtz of Philadelphia has presented five flags to the Widener Library in memory of his son, P. B. Kurtz '16. Lieutenant Kurtz, who had been awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government, was a member of the aviation force of the French army. He was killed in action near Toul, May 22, 1918. Kurtz was a friend of Harry Elkins Widener '07, in memory of whom the Widener Library is named.

The flags of America, and of the allied nations, England, France, Italy and Belgium, will be placed in the Memorial Room of the Library where they will remain until the erection of a permanent memorial to the Harvard men who died in the war.

Three thousand volumes of extremely valuable Russian books, including the first important historical sets since the Revolution in Russia, are also being added to the Library, most of which were collected by Professor A. C. Coolidge '87, Director of Widener, during his stay in Moscow. Included in the collection are some extremely rare and learned works, such as the reports of the Russian Archeographical and Archeological Commission, and these will be valuable to advanced students in the University. Books of a lighter vein, some illustrated by Russian artists of the new school; Bolshevist periodicals, many of literary and scholarly merit; and scientific tracts, are numbered in the list of works. The report of the Russian Academy of Science deserves mention as one of the most valuable of the sets.

The University of Kazan has presented 100 volumes on scholarly subjects, entirely in Russian. Such material is difficult to procure now, for the Bolshevist government has requisitioned all that it could find of the older writings which are of the most value to the scholar. These books date back to the time of Napoleon.