The West Virginian

TUESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 14, 1922.

HOW TO SECURE A PUBLIC LIBRARY.

The public knows that the West Virginian has ever been one of the warmest advocates of a public library. This newspaper has lost no opportunity to urge upon the people this need. It is therefore, with keenest regret that The West Virginian finds itself unable to approve the plan to secure a library decided upon by the Fairmont Library Association at its meeting Saturday evening.

There are, in the opinion of The West Virginian, some insurmountable reasons why the plan of the committee cannot succeed.

The committee announces a decision to purchase the Morrow property for $25,000. This property is not desirably located for a public library.

The property is beautiful and desirable for other purposes, and the price set upon it is not exorbitant considering the general value of real estate in the city, but it is not accessible enough for the people, and the initial expenditure involved makes it prohibitive for a public library.

If the Library Association comes before the public for $25,000 for a property, to which must be added a substantial sum for remodeling the building to make it suitable for a library, then the people are going to be asked to contribute from $30,000 to $35,000 before a single volume can be purchased for the library. In view of the way the public has responded lately to welfare appeals of various nature, The West Virginian does not believe that any effort will induce the public to consider such a proposition.

The West Virginian would like to advocate a substitute plan, one which it has consistently advocated for a long time—a plan which it believes would not only secure a library for the people, but would take care of other municipal and county needs, and better and greater than all, make due acknowledgment of a sacred debt of Marion County that remains, as yet, unpaid.

The West Virginian has always had the hope, and it is a hope echoed in the hearts of hundreds of citizens that Marion County would erect a Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in the form of a beautiful and impressive building that would fittingly house the American Legion Headquarters, the World War Veterans, the G. A. R. and the Red Cross, a building which might contain as well, a municipal hall large enough to take care of the great audiences that have now no place to assemble in convention, or other events of public importance, and—lastly—but by no means of lesser importance, shelter a library that shall be a county possession, belonging to the entire county, in which every citizen shall have a share.

The people of Marion County will ever have a just debt unrecognized until some signal commemoration is erected in honor of the men who went out from the homes of the county to face the hardship and the terror of war. One by one the flag draped coffins have been lowered to their last resting place in Marion County, as the government returned to their native land the boys who fell in battle, and even yet the sad processional continues as men weakened and diseased by the terrible exposure of those days, drop aside in the years that should mark the proud prime of manhood; these last no less war heroes than those whose blood dyed French soil.

The tribute of Marion County to these men and to soldiers and sailors of former wars has been too long delayed. It is surely time that some movement should be made toward the discharge of this debt, and there would be no more fitting way to plan such a memorial than to make it a thing of beauty and dignity, and something of benefit to the people for succeeding generations to come.

Somewhere, lost in the shuffle of affairs, there is a Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Committee. It is of county wide scope and was appointed to plan for and to secure a suitable memorial. Why not urge this committee from its prolonged lethargy and, together with the strong library association, put the memorial proposition up to the public. If the public will back anything involving as much money as $35,000, it would be a Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, which, of course, would demand a greater sum than the amount named, but would touch every heart in the county, and secure a public sympathy that could be gained in no other way.