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THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS known that even a larger proportion of the books that are taken out and read are novels. We will not say one should never read a novel, but much novel reading is not merely a waste of time, it is positively injurious intellectually, to say nothing about morally and spiritually. , No one can ever attain to strong mentality by reading that takes no intellectual effort. If one would be a strong thinker he must give the major part of the time ihat he gives to reading to the reading of books that demand the closest concentration .of thought. Men grow strong mentally just as they do physically, by hard work. We once heard a man speaking in what he intended to be high praise of a minister, saying that the minister was very scholarly because he read a book a day every day in his life ; but any man who gives mheh of his reading to books that he can read through in a day is not scholarly and cannot by any possibility be a thinker. It may be well enough occasionally, as a matter of mental recreation, to read a book that one can read in a' day, but one should read very few books in the course of a year that he can read in a day. There can be no question that our public libraries as they are now conducted are exerting a very pernicious influence in Weakening minds of their patrons and still more weakening their char acters. Fathers and mothers should exercise a far more watchful care than the average father or mother does over the reading of their children. They should watch more guardedly not only as to what their children read but as to how they read it and they should permit only a very limited reading of story books. E N G L A N D ’ S Most Dangerous Foe It is reported “ that when the late Lord Rhondda, British Food Con troller, heard early last winter that the American wheat surplus had been used up, he cabled despondently to Mr. Hoover, ‘ We are beaten; the war is over.’ ” And it is claimed that England was saved, and the cause of the Allies was saved, by the wheatless days and war breads which enabled America to send.promptly across the Atlantic twenty million bushels of 1917 wheat from the stock held for our own needs. But England might have been saved in another way. If England had not used- up her own wheat supply and other cereal supplies in the manufacture of whisky and beer, there would have been no such dire shortage as led Lord Rhondda to his despairing cry. We are glad that America came to the rescue; but it was England’s own folly, and especially the folly of their public men, that led to the emergency; and it was strong drink and the men, who for the sake of the fattening of their own purses, force the drink upon England, that were England’s most dangerous foes, and they are' still. And the drink interests are America’s most dangerous foes today. There is nothing
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