THE IDEAL LIBRARY

Evening Star, Issue 20346, 30 November 1929, Page 25

THE IDEAL LIBRARY

MR BALDWIN'S VIEWS

Mr Stanley Baldwin, M.P., opened the new library at Gray’s Inn recently. The new libraary shares with the old hall of Lincoln’s Inn tlio distinction of being one of the most • ambitious and costly architectural works carried out in the Inns of Court in recent years. It has cost about £40,000'. The old library in South square housed about 30,000 volumes. It is comprehended in the new building, which has also absorbed an adjoining block, and there are now shelves sufficient for 50,000 books. Mr Baldwin said that it was interesting to reflect that in the earlier clays of Gray’s Inn Library a man whoso name was well known throughout Europe said, “ The multiplication of books is a great cell.” He said that four centuries ago, but the word; might have been uttered to-day, when everybodywanted to read. “So much for Martin Luther,” he added. “ Would he had been living now. I do not utter those words in the sense that the late Home Secretary • would have uttered them. (Laughter.) I utter them—well, 1 leave the rest to your imagination.” There were no greater bores in the world, said Mr Baldwin (according to the ‘Manchester Guardian ’), than those who asked you, . “ What is the best book you have road lately? What book has helped you most?” He always wanted to answer, “ The book that has helped me most has not yet, been written.” “There are librrios and libraries,” said Mr Baldwin, “ and if I may take an example of one which combines nearly everything that makes a library impossible from my point of view, I would like to say a word about the library of the House of Commons. There are rooms full of books, none of whicli I should ever look at were I alone on a desert island for the rest of my life. Going there if you arc in search of anything that_ you want, anything that your spirit enjoys, _ is very like going into a cellar of which the owner has boasted to yon, and you find it contains nothing but saline draughts instead of the choice products of vineyards whose names are music to the ear.

“No, my,ideal of a library is one that'has inscribed, over it that inscription which was chosen by a junior naval officer for his destroyer, ‘Ut veniant omnes ’ —‘ Let them all come.’ A library cannot be too catholic. A library should be a place into which you can be flung at any time, and you will find your own pasturage. It should be to me as the briar patch was to Brer Rabbit. _ People who have been born and bred in libraries merely want to be flung into them and write on the walls ‘ Ut veniant omnes..’ ”