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CKNOWLEDGMENT. For the thirteenth time, the proceedings of Professor Rose's society, devoted to the selection and discussion of the best books for teachers are chronicled in this EDUCATIONAL REVIEW. With a conviction that conversation upon things that matter is an exercise of intelligence desired by healthy school men and women, he and the talented Mrs. Rose have inspired and guided this even score of scholars to the point of satisfying authors, publishers, librarians, and readers that a book review need not be dull. When you consider this carefully you will conclude that to make a venture like this requires considerable courage. Bookreviewing is serious business. You attempt in five minutes to pass judgment on the laborious work of more than a thousand hours. It would be a sorry author not to hold his book as the darling of his heart. That in these thirteen months the Bibliologoi have in his estimation wounded only one reader and, if he speaks truly, not at all deeply, is a triumph of American generosity and good manners. These amateurs in the sometimes savage art of criticism do take their service seriously. We have the word of both Congreve and Addison that when we are serious we are in great danger of being dull. Unless the good-natured intelligentsia who write to the editor prefer complimenting to truth-telling, the plants, in the professor's Rose-garden are losing none of the charm of healthy blooming.

An educational review must review. A

summary of the scattered remarks of laymen culled from the press, an array of essays of schoolmen who are thinking of progress, a batch of news from the doings of a national association-these can by no means justify the magazine's title unless it adds consideration of the matured and sober conclusions of the students of education to be found chiefly in books.

The book-review is therefore a necessity. Publishers are skeptical of its value. Publishers are skeptical of many things. Skepticism is a protective coloring. What can take the place of a book review? Advertisement? That's a brief review. Exposure in a shop window? This magazine's window, its front cover, shows the books. Conversation? That is where Professor Rose's coterie functions. He has asked how many read the minutes of his meetings. I personally know of twenty who do the members themselves. Then there is the editor, and Claude Leland, the librarian of the New York Schools, Payson Smith, Secretary Doudna, and Mrs. Dorsey of Los Angeles. Furthermore, they say that the reviews, more interesting than most book analyses at the beginning, have grown more readable by experience. The meeting recorded in this number is full of meat, well seasoned, savory, nutritious. Therefore this acknowledgment to the Bibliologoi. May they continue to receive and sift the books the editor sends them. May they keep on preferring reading to retrogression. That after thirteen months of meeting this lively club has

all its members still reading is a tribute to the professional spirit of American teachers or to the excellence of the prandial hospitality of the Roses. Furthermore, to make one bundle of the books received and turn them all over to a syndicate like this instead of peddling appeals to this and that professed busy school man is a performance so simple, speedy, and satisfactory that the thought of any dissolution of the bookreviewers' union is dreadful. Vivant Bibliologoi, vivat pater, vivat domina, Rosa.

Time for a Compendium.-Yesterday I was in court. Attorneys Frank Righeimer and Ralph Condee were arguing the right and duty of the board of education to pass rules and regulations for the efficiency of the school system. On the table, to which they had been brought from the offices of these gentlemen, were thirty-three law books with slips of paper used to locate desired pages. As Squire Righeimer proceeded to quote the law Mr. Condee handed him book after book. You would hear what the judge decided in the case of Cusack vs. Board of Education of the City of New York, Wilson against the Rockford School Board. Through the open door, at the judge's right, you could see the walls of the chamber entirely covered by serried ranks of law books.

How do the attorneys find these decisions? By an index of course. Hundreds of expert students have combed the court proceedings and under every conceivable catch word which might be the idea in the head of a searcher they have catalogued the cases. This profession has its facts digested and classified.

A boy, in the boarding house where I was in the summer, underwent some sort of a spasm and fell unconscious. The only physician available was a young man a half a mile distant. When he arrived the boy was out of his fit. Young medico asked many questions and said very little, gave a few suggestions and said he would look in later in the afternoon. When he came back he was a most interesting talker on the subject of spasms, spells, and similar slips.

of nature. Why? The doctor has a digest similar to the lawyer's. By means of an index, cross-referenced and sub-titled, he can run down the concentrated experiences of thousands of practitioners appertaining to every sort of misfortune that has ever happened to the human frame.

We are poor for want of these time savers. Johnson's school board is being pushed by a prominent member into passing a resolution prohibiting the employment of day-school teachers in the night schools. Johnson has a faint recollection of having seen, once, somewhere, an account of some town having done that and wrecked its evening school system. Where was it? When was it? Few men can hold such details in their memory. Thompson's board is being bombarded with protests against increasing the average membership of high-school classes. Thompson is sure he once read a statistical study showing that nobody suffered when the high-school classes were made larger. Where, oh where? What is the effect of using departmental teaching in the sixth grade? In the fifth? Lower? It has been tried. Where? What were the measurable results? Who is using the spelling methods in vogue in Brown's school system with what measured results as compared with the spelling methods in Smithville?

How are you going to find out regarding the specific matter that is bothering you? You jump for the help of a questionnaire. But in half the school circles now the questionnaire has been ostracised as impertinent, ungentlemanly, impolite, ill-bred, discourteous, bad mannered, vulgar, obtrusive, and a nuisance. If you can get your Board to spend the twenty-five dollars a year, which are the dues, you can get your facts from the Research Bureau of the National Education Association. Commissioner Tigert's office is very obliging in the way of looking up anything that may be on record in the library of the United States Bureau of Education. But the doctor and the lawyer can find his facts thirty and one-half times quicker than

we.

This morning I was talking with William

Lane, librarian of Harvard, and Frank Chase of the Boston Public Library. Later, Dorcas Bishop, librarian of the Harvard Graduate School of Education came in, and Willis Uhl of the University of Wisconsin School of Education. Then came Michigan University's librarian, William Bishop; Ruth Abbott, librarian of the School of Education, University of Chicago; and Phineas Windsor, librarian of the University of Illinois. None of these knew of any compendium or digest of educational conclusions. Doctor Uhl said there is great need of one. Every fact, conclusion, result should be recorded in a digest and made. accessible by an adequate reference and index system. Mr. Lane and Miss Bishop think John Wolcott's and John Norton's occasional pamphlets from the United States Bureau and the National Association are the nearest approach. Mr. Weld and Mr. Searson, out in Lincoln, issue an educational digest every month but it is an educational magazine. Its publishers make it bright, vivacious, and attractive. Completeness would stifle it. The Bruce clan in Milwaukee issue in their School-Board Journal a large number of legal decisions on school matters. Their organization for collecting news is superior but they, too, run an "interesting" project. Every educational editor I consulted doubted whether there are enough school men who can raise the price that a bare digest of facts and conclusions would cost, Mr. Bishop said he devoutly wished there were a digest in education comparable to those in medicine, law, and other callings. It would be a godsend to the students and professors in Ann Arbor. They must go through the Wilson indexes to periodical literature. Miss Abbott expressed the same idea. Mr. Windsor said the National Association appointed Thomas Briggs, Burdette Buckingham, and Stuart Courtis in 1921 to devise a compendium. Some of the large libraries have tried to interest the Wilsons in making an index for educational material similar to their agricultural digest. You can conjecture why a firm so expert in tabulating doesn't tackle

our affairs. We are numerous enough but, alas, too many of us have been delayed in developing the professional slant. There has been too much getting by with making a demonstration rather than with demonstrating. Doctor Windsor sincerely hopes educational leaders will do their utmost to get this long-felt want satisfied. Mr. Chase considers us much in the dark for lack of an educational digest. He thinks the idea only waiting for a strong impulse to put it into operation. He wants the REVIEW to interest Joy Morgan and John Tigert and especially H. W. Wilson, the expert index man, in the project.

Later in the day Elizabeth Baldwin, librarian of Teachers College, Columbia, retold me she regrets that nothing of the kind exists. There are Hood's Digest of School Laws, 1915; and Finnegan's Judicial Decisions, New York schools, 1913; Miss Baldwin, like the others, points to the Wilson Company, New York. All the librarians appear to love them. But, say they all, the firm would have to be convinced that there would be enough subscribers to warrant undertaking a work of this kind. Miss Baldwin told me that she has so many enquiries from all over the country for indexes of educational facts and conclusions that it shows the time to be ripe to start such an enterprise.

Then I talked with Commissioner Tigert who reminded me that the Bureau Library furnishes information for the asking-as far as possible. The Bureau compiles bibliographies, book reviews, summaries of educational magazines and issues copies of book lists arranged according to subject. He, too, lauds the Wilsons.