GERMAN BOOKS AS REPARATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3596, 13 February 1923, Page 21

GERMAN BOOKS AS REPARATIONS.

GIGANTIC LIBRARY WORTH 4,000,000 GOLD MARKS. ITALY’S BARGAIN. Italy lias struck an extraordinary bargain vvi-h Germany regarding a portion of the reparations due to her from the Fatheiland. So writes Mr George Ren wick, special correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, in a ctespatch from Rome. An agreement has been signed by representatives of the two countries (and only awaits the approval of the Reparations ’ Commission to become effective) whereby the German Government undertakes to furnish books and scientific publications to the Italian State to the value of 4,000.000 gold marks. When tlie books have been delivered the amount mentioned will be deducted fiorn the sum of the Italian share of reparations. The bargain means that the German Government will have to carry through the biggest piece of book-buying on record, for several hundreds of -thousands of books, periodicals and documents must be procured. Italy will furnish lists of her Requirements. The gaps in ber public libraries and book collections have been carefully catalogued, and it is these gaps that Germany will fill —gaps wbich came about during and immediately after the war when the purchase of German publications was completely suspended. Not only tliat, but to Italy’s libraries and scientific institutions there will be assigned an enormous quantity of valuable German works, mainly scientific, published, before the war. In the case of any volumes which are out of print, the German Government undertakes to search all the secondhand bookshops for copies. This big purchase of books will cost the German Government something like 8000’million paper marks at the present rate of exchange. I 1 ■ It is all the more interesting because it will follow closely on the transfer to, tho Vatican Library of the library, consisting of over 10,000 ancient books, codexes, and missals which belonged to the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary. This highly valuable collection was original'y in the possession of a Roman nobleman, whose widow bequeathed it to the Jesuits, with the proviso that, should the order bs suppressed, the library was to pass into the keeping of the Emperor. He thus bep&ms its owner in 1873. As the result of the late Pope’s negotiations with the Austrian Govern merit," this collection will be available at the Vatican Library for the students of all nations. Such great additions to the public librariej and the literary treasures of a nation aw probably without parallel.