20,000 Lives

England long ago called upon the full strength of her scholarship to make and continue the British Dictionary .of National Biography. Germany has her Allegemeine Deutsche Biographic. These and similar gigantic works in other countries, though they treat of their subjects, however distinguished, only in factual outline and leave the delineation of men in their entirety to their Boswells, are complete and authoritative basis upon which studies of mankind will be made in the far future.

The U. S. has no such catalog. The nearest approach is Appleton's' Cyclopedia of American Biography, six volumes, now 35 years of age. But, last week, the Nation was told it would receive a present. Perceiving that it was most improbable that any publisher of books would ever underwrite so vast an undertaking, Publisher Adolph S. Ochs of The New York Times declared his paper would advance $500,000 to the American Council of Learned Societies Devoted to Humanistic Studies, for the creation of 20 volumes containing the lives of some 20,000 illustrious Americans, including none of the living. The Times sought to assume no control over the project, "the function of the Times being simply that of making possible, by this large subvention, the preparation of a book of reference which has long been . . . the one great desideratum among American works of reference."

The plan for the Dictionary originated two years ago in the Council of Learned Societies. A committee under Dr. John F. Jameson of the Carnegie Institution (Washington, D.C.) laid out the work, suggesting the British Dictionary as a model and recommending that all articles be the fruit of fresh work by specially qualified writers. It was "hoped and believed" that the work would "stand upon a unique level of authority, scholarship and literary quality."

A permanent committee of management was appointed after the Times' announcement: Dr. Jameson, Chairman ; Dr. John H. Finley, Editor of the Times; Prof. Frederic L. Paxson, of the University of Wisconsin; Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, daughter of Adolf S. Ochs, member of the Board of Directors of the Times; Carl Van Doren, literary editor of the Century; the Hon. Charles Warren, lawyer. These six were to choose a seventh to serve as Editor-in-Chief. The Library of Congress will be the scene of labor. Vol. 1 is expected within four years, the rest at three volumes per annum thereafter.

Newspapers, magazines, rejoiced at what the Times had done. Most public prints keep "morgues" wherein are laid away the facts concerning notables, for exhumation when the notables figure in news. No morgue can be too complete.