GOOD BOOKS FOR A GAS-PROOF ROOM

Southland Times, Issue 23544, 25 June 1938, Page 14

GOOD BOOKS FOR A GAS-PROOF ROOM

The old problem of the . choice of books wherewith to alleviate one’s loneliness on a desert island has become rather stale. The Manchester Guardian has devised an ingenious and timely variant of it by offering a prize for the best list of books with which to furnish a gas-proof room. This question, as it points out, is not to be decided by Robinson Crusoe standards, for such a room is intended only as a temporary abode. Moreover, an air raid in the future is going to be a sociable affair. The neighbours will be in, and every one will be in close proximity to every one else. What is wanted, too, is something distracting; not something that intensifies a sense of impending disaster. Hence the competitions editor turns down an entry which suggests “The Last Days of Pompeii,” “The City of Dreadful Night,” Bunyan’s “Sighs From Hell” and Blair’s “Grave.” Various competitors would like to have a book of really tough crosswords, a collection of mathematical problems, a dictionary, an atlas (“for mental escape to more desirable climes”) a “Who’s Who” and other works of reference. Others conceive the idea that this would be a good opportunity to read books for which they have not previously been able to find time —for instance, “Paradise Lost,” “The Vicar of Wakefield” and “Das Kapital.” The works of Alexander Pope, Boswell’s “Johnson” and Urquhart’s “Rabelais” are recommended as reminders, respectively, that men were once civilized, that men were once sensible, and that there are better kinds of nonsense than dropping gas bombs. “The Pickwick Papers” is proposed as a help to keep one’s spirits from going down, and “The Students’ Song Book” for community singing. The most optimistic competitor is surely the one who would take with him a tourist’s guide in order to plan his next vacation.