CATACOMBS OF NEWSPAPERS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1751, 27 September 1905, Page 68

CATACOMBS OF NEWSPAPERS

(London "Daily Telegraph.”) One day some three years ago tbt British House of Peers —that is, just aM many of the members of the august assembly as were necessary to make » quorum—with all due form and ceremony, gathered to consider a number of minor measures. It was such a very ordinary sitting that not a soul appeared in the galleries about the. crimson-covered seats. One of the small items on the agenda was a bill dealing with the British Museum. This at the end of the few Tines, which were all it could boast, set forth, with the pomp and circumstance of a great enactment that in future it should be known as “The British Museum Act of 1902.” What it did was to erapower the trustees of the great national repository to remove to new buildings at Hendon “any papers and other printed matter which appear to be rarely required for public use.” “But.” it went on, the trustees shall make arrangements to the satisfaction of the Treasury for making any newspapers and printed matter so removed available for use by the public at the present museum buildings on due notice being given.” When the Lord Chancellor at each stage rose from the Wbolsaok and asked if there wore any f non-content s, ” none disclosed himself, and this scrap of legislation therefore became law. It has taken some considerable time, but the other day the Hendon building was at last practically completed, and before long the accumulations of years of British journalism will be carried from the catacombs at Bloomsbury to their new abiding place. And what do these accumulations represent? How much enterprise and work and worry ! How much capital in gold and how much more in brains and bodies crushed into the forgotten as the wheel of time roll# on ! The big bound volumes are " rarely required.” One or another may be occasionally asked for, and when that happens it will be forthcoming with articles, paragraphs, and reports duly recorded* Their purpose was served the day they were published. The next, excepting in this vast national storehouse, they were most likely mere torn rubbish. The leader that had aroused the comment of a continent, that was the result of year# of study, combined with the efforts of the youngest member of the staff to set a kitchen fire aglow. Love tales of daily life, stories of happiness or despair, joined to aid the conflagration. The ends of the earth were brought together, men risked their life and health in strange lands items in a vast organisation while science and invention lent their aid to gratify the news-hunger of a vaster public. Down among the catacombs, in the files of a great journal, may be found a letter penned by a correspondent. It was the last and best he ever wrote. As he saw the despatch being borne away by a messenger to where it would be safely forwarded, he wag reminded of Arnault’s poem about the fallen leaf, withered and forgotten, swept hither and thither, helpless in the breeze. It had its work, and was going “ where all things go.” Sickness was upon him. He was in the midst of other dangers. The end came soon after, wrapped in mystery; but the public had their news. The case is perhaps not rare. Possibly few ever kept the lines he penned even when the circumstances under which they were written became known. Next day, doubtless, there was a new wonder to obliterate the memory of what had gone before. But the British Museum does not forget. For those who "rarely require” them these files will ever be ready to ■ unfold their records, to gratify a whim or aid the law.