Sir Alfred Mond, of the Office of Works, has commandeered
part of the British Museum for the use of the Air Board. Ths collections are to be removed to make room for Lord Rothermere's clerks and girl typewriters, for whom the Hotel Cecil is not large enough. If there were no other large building in London that had not yet been occupied by a new Government Department we should have nothing to say. But it is well known that there are many hotels, mansions, clubs, and office buildings still in private hands, and that one of the largest of these stands next door to the Air Board's present home. In these circumstances the decision to use the British Museum as a Government office can only be described as an outrage, and we are not surprised to find plain citizens like Mr. Kennedy Jones joining the Trustees, the Director of the National Gallery, and scholars of the type of Sir John Sandys in a chorus of indignant protest. If the Office of Works and the Air Board were wiped out by air-bombs to-morrow, they could be replaced at once. But the world-famous British Museum collections are irreplaceable, and posterity will adjudge us to have been as bar- barous as the Caliph Omar, who is said to have burned the library of Alexandria, if we wilfully and needlessly expose our greatest national treasures to the risk of destruction.
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