It seems that " Big Bill," otherwise Mr. William Hale
Thompson, the Mayor of Chicago, is not to be allowed to make a public bonfire of British books in the Chicago Library. All decent Americans—who deserve and have our sympathy—have had to watch his antics so far with a kind of pained amusement, but the burning of books printed in Great Britain on the absurd ground that they were British propaganda was. too silly to be allowed. The citizens of Chicago have discovered now—what had been generally forgotten—that a considerable number of the British books in the Library were presented nearly sixty years ago at the instance of Queen Victoria as a token of British sympathy when the Library of that time was burnt. There are volumes from the most distinguished British authors of the day who signed the copies they sent. • •
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