13 JULY 1944, Page 10

MARGINAL COMMENT

By HAROLD NICOLSON

THE Publishers' Association on Wednesday published a memorandum in which they review the present and future prospects of the book trade. They forecast a serious shortage of books, of paper, and of labour for binding. To a large extent this unfortunate situation is due to circumstances beyond our control, but the damage could at least be mitigated by a more generous and far-seeing attitude on the part of the Ministry of Production towards the book trade in Great Britain. Few things have struck me so forcibly, during recent visits abroad, as the extraordinary demand which has arisen for English educational and other works. The miracle of our resistance and recovery has aroused among foreigners an unsatisfied curiosity as to the real nature of the British character, and a desire to discover whether we possess some secret formula such as might justify and explain the high repute that we have won. In Sweden, in North Africa again, I found among the booksellers whom I visited an eager appetite for English books. The British Council, I understand, are doing their very best to supply this demand ; steps are also being taken to accumulate supplies of English books for the needs of liberated Europe ; but the fact remains that the market of vast importance to Europe and ourselves may be missed owing to the meagre allowance of paper allowed under the present quota system to the British book trade. Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, some time ago, proclaimed himself to be upon the side of the angels ; if so (and I fully believe it to be so), his co-belligerency is of the tepid variety ; after all the fuss and protestations, all that he conceded last November was an increase of 24 per cent. When one considers that the news- papers are allowed 250,000 tons of paper, that His Majesty's Stationery Office absorbs too,000 tons, and that the book trade gets only 20,000, it is difficult not to feel that somebody's sense of relative values has become blurred. It irritates me to hear that the War Office alone take unto themselves every year as much as 5,000 tons more paper than all the publishers put together. And much as I admire the M.o.I. publications, I regret that some of the paper used for booklets is not released for books.