HOTELKEEPERS IN CONFERENCE By Eugene Herbodeau and Others The condition
of the English hotel industry has long been established in the public mind as a reliable and lively source of controversy, about which spirited advocacy can be expected from either side. The latest contribution to the subject, Hotelkeepers in Conference (Allman and Son, is. 6d.), which is a collection of papers read by experts before the Hotels and Restaurants Association 0 Great Britain, con- tains, as is natural, a fair amount with which one would not expect agreement from persons outside that profession, though as a whole its tone is neither biassed nor parochial. Not all of it will be of immediate interest to the general reader, though all of it is worth consideration by those who regularly or intermittently frequent hotels. Mr. Albert Fleck's paper on the Assessment of Values of Hotels and Restaurants, for instance, though it is clear and informative, will probably seem of little concern to any but the specialized reader, and the same may be said of Sir Percy Simmons' paper on the Evasion of the Licensing Laws and, in slightly less degree, of Mr. George Reeves-Smith's somewhat too inclusively titled chapter on the Hotel and Restaurant Industry—though the value of each of these three papers to anyone connected with hotel and restaurant management must be fully recognized. Mr. H. Lingard's paper on the Effective Use of Electric Light will be read with pleasure by everyone who frequents hotels, and, one hopes, with profit by the less enterprising of those who manage them- es well as with justified pride by those who are up to date in this respect. Lord Horder's chapter on the Suppression of Noise will be read with approval by everyone, and not only in its reference to hotels, and both Mr. Eugene Herbodeau's paper on the History of Cooking and Mr. Andre Simon's discussion of the Value of Wine are informative and well compressed pieces of work which might have been 'delivered with profit before audiences not remotely connected with the hotel industry. There is nothing of revolutionary novelty in this collection, but there is evidence that neither intelligence nor enterprise is lacking in those guiding the hotel industry in Great Britain today, and that hotelkeepers as a whole arc aware both of their responsibility and of their opportunity.
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