NOVEL WAR LIBRARY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 104, 27 January 1931, Page 3

NOVEL WAR LIBRARY

High Praise from Experts INNUMERABLE CLIPPINGS What a number of authorities say is probably the most nearly complete and up-to-date private collection of war literature has been assembled by an American physician, Dr. Joseph Broadman. of New York. A year after the outbreak of war in 1914 he took clippings from innumerable newspapers and accumulated war literature from embassies and any other source, the whole of which be has kept in scrap-books. His library now represents the labour of fifteen years. Its physical . proportions alone are stupendous, for it is contained in 34 packing cases, eacli weighing about 5001 b., while 150 large scrap-books were needed for the editorial comments and newspaper clippings of important reports. There are complete files of oyer 60 American and foreign periodicals for the period of the war and beyond. I tactically every possible angle of the great conflict is presented—that was Dr. Broadman’s idea in starting the collection—and it is considered by many authorities that the library’ is one that should be preserved permanently. Such documents as these, it has been pointed out. perish quickly, and unless the collection is preserved there will be as little information of current attitudes to the World War as we now have of the Napoleonic and other wars. However. Dr. Broadman does not consider the collection absolutely contains every angle of outlook, nnd he is anxious to receive any war literature in any language so that he may preserve it in one major collection for future generations. The library is claimed /to be a unique and realistic work of the world conflict, and the compiler by his invitation, gives all countries an opportunity to be represented in it. to have their actual outlook at the time recorded. Such a work would appear to be of inestimable value to historians.