(less twenty per cent retained by the library) to go
to the author. The project—which in a different form operates in all three Scaffdinavian countries—has been thoroughly mulled over, though in an unco-ordinated way, by most of the interests involved; and the general consensus of opinion seems to be that if only the Government, who have been pressed for sever a century to do something for the public libraries, would give them a small subsidy, they should be able to overcome the administrative difficulties (whose importance many think has been exaggerated) and make the scheme work. The State helps the theatre, the films, opera, ballet and arts; all it does for the author is to tax him, and few people realise in what desperate straits many authors of repute and integrity find themselves today. Mr. Brophy has calculated that a penny rate would yield an "average popular novelist" £666 a year; and the fact that those who need the money least would do better than this, while those who need it most would fare worse, is not an argument in favour of preserving a system under which none of them gets anything at all.
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