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 [. Reprinted from the Library Journal, September , iqtq] 
 
 THE A. L. A.: DIPLOMAT 
 
 By M. Llewellyn Raney, Librarian of Johns Hopkins University 
 
 ‘‘With reference to your No. 3368, of 
 the fifteenth instant, and also your No. 
 3401 of the nineteenth instant, the De- 
 partment sees no objection to enlarging the 
 scope of importation policy so-called. Per- 
 mit entry to approximately the same extent 
 and under similar restrictions as the French 
 and British allow.” 
 
 In this cablegram from the Secretary of 
 State to the American Ambassador in Paris 
 is announcement of as signal an honor as 
 was ever accorded the American Library 
 Association in its entire history. It may 
 be called the culmination of seventeen 
 months of diplomatic scrutiny and formally 
 placed in our hands the virtual exercise of 
 an extremely delicate government function 
 in war time — the importation of enemy pub- 
 lications. 
 
 In England and France this authority, 
 fraught with great possibilities of help or 
 harm, was vested in State officials, only-^ 
 His Majesty’s Stationery Office/ and the 
 Ministry of Foreign Affairs respectively. 
 The American policy was formulated on the 
 basis of our investigation of foreign prac- 
 tice made at the instance of the State 
 Department and adopted without change. 
 In us was concentrated the responsibility of 
 carrying out this policy. Our mails were 
 carried in the diplomatic pouch, our ship- 
 ments under the United States seal. The 
 entire arrangement represented an agree- 
 ment among three Foreign Offices, effected 
 by our initiative, and involved, besides, the 
 active cooperation of the War Trade and 
 Censorship Boards, two embassies and two 
 legations. Their extraordinary courtesies 
 it is a duty and a very great pleasure to 
 acknowledge. 
 
 This movement outdates by six months 
 that which resulted in the Association’s li- 
 brary service to the nation’s armed forces. 
 Indeed, it was this earlier experience that 
 led to the writer’s dispatch overseas in the 
 effort to extend our program there — an 
 effort which secured us a large place in 
 the sun on land and sea, adequate tonnage, 
 
 and a field survey, which, tabulated, became 
 the chart of our foreign staff, tho the lists 
 had been closed, cargo space was well-nigh 
 unthinkable, and the lines were tight against 
 civilians. 
 
 Whether or not this confidence of Wash- 
 ington in the Committee on Importations 
 was ever shaken may be judged by the fol- 
 lowing voluntary letter from the War Trade 
 Board, sent prefatory to our final action — 
 the examination of material imported 
 abroad; — a letter “which I fully, indorse,” 
 writes the chairman of the Censorship 
 Board: “We are very glad to be able 
 
 to record our satisfaction of the manner in 
 which our Enemy Trading License 1727 
 to the American Library Association has 
 been handled by you. We have felt great 
 confidence in being able to refer to you 
 requests for relief from various libraries 
 and public institutions and we believe by 
 your careful supervision, the interests of 
 both the Censorship Board and the War 
 Trade Board have been protected, and the 
 requirements of the libraries and public in- 
 stitutions reasonably satisfied. 
 
 “In connection with your trip abroad, we 
 are inclined to think that the public interests 
 demand a liberal interpretation of the terms 
 of our license, and as far as a consistent 
 examination of any material now im- 
 pounded may satisfy you, the shipments 
 should be allowed to go forward liberally. 
 We beg to express our confidence in your 
 judgment in any shipments to which you 
 mqy give your approval.” 
 
 But what business had the American Li- 
 brary Association or anybody else to aid 
 the entrance of German publications in 
 war time, one may ask. „ Did we not know 
 of their lying propaganda? Besides was it 
 not against the law to trade with them 
 anyhow ? 
 
 These were just the kind of questions 
 put to a prominent London librarian by his 
 indignant board, who brought him to book 
 in the early days of the conflict and set a 
 day for his trial. At the appointed time 
 
2 
 
 he produced a letter from the Admiralty 
 which sent his accuser^ scurrying to cover 
 and dismissed that case with all like it. 
 
 It appears that the workers in one of 
 the plants were falling of some mysterious 
 occupational disease, and this librarian was 
 summoned to search the literature for a rem- 
 edy. He chanced to find it in a recent peri- 
 odical received on the license which his 
 Trustees thought to revoke. The epidemic 
 was stayed and the Admiralty’s commenda- 
 tion of the library consulted was warm. It is 
 not German science, art, and scholarship 
 that we crossed the Atlantic to smash, but 
 the military barbarism which had perverted 
 them. 
 
 And right here it is at last permissible 
 to make two interesting disclosures. In 
 Switzerland we secured for the American 
 Red Cross Medical Library f in Paris, the 
 German periodicals desired by our physi- 
 cians in military service, much to their ac- 
 claim; and, in the second place, it was done 
 thru the French Government, which, with- 
 out any suggestion on our part had, in in- 
 augurating its importation procedure, made 
 provision for the Allies as well. Its ma- 
 chinery was not employed for our other 
 orders, because it would patently work a 
 hardship on a busy officer, but this typi- 
 cal courtesy was keenly appreciated and 
 merits the knowledge of the Association. 
 
 Another acknowledgement it is a satisfac- 
 tion to chronicle. The opportunity of per- 
 forming all this service was an inspiration 
 of Dr. Frank P. Hill, Chief Librarian of 
 the Brooklyn Public Library. He sug- 
 gested the committee and led them to the 
 first Washington conferences. To his strong 
 initiative we owe much else that is prized in 
 our war record. If ever there was a 
 headstrong secretary allowed free rein by 
 an indulgent chairman, I am that one. 
 The generosity which he has shown 
 on public occasions is as fine a trait as it 
 is rare. 
 
 Our troubles began when the blockade 
 of the German coast was established in 
 March, 1915, tho with the aid of other 
 neutrals service limped on for a year after- 
 ward. The British were not slow to rec- 
 ognize the stupidity of refusing to read 
 
 what the enemy wrote, tho to perfect the 
 system of drawing off the propagandism 
 without breaking the yolk of science took 
 time. 
 
 On the American side, the Librarian of 
 Congress was chief counsel for the first 
 two years, tho for some months it was gen- 
 erally unknown. With the Department of 
 State and the British Embassy he conducted 
 a skillful and voluminous correspondence, 
 which resulted, toward the close of 1915, 
 in the establishment of the “permit system,” 
 whereby the British Foreign Office agreed 
 to the importation of publications “philo- 
 sophical, scientific, technical or educational” 
 in character, if destined for “universities, 
 colleges or public bodies,” on applications 
 properly “vouched” by the Librarian of 
 Congress. 
 
 The inauguration of this system cost him 
 long and arduous labor, and upon the prob- 
 lem, by his consent, Mr. T. W. Koch, then 
 Chief of the Order Division of the Library 
 of Congress, spent no small share of his 
 time, while resident in London during the 
 first half of 1917. He carried with him 
 prodigious lists of outstanding orders from 
 American libraries, and, while he has never 
 published a report, it is known that he 
 gave especial attention to parcels in deten- 
 tion there, in the hope of effecting their 
 release. 
 
 But the system came to naught, tho thru 
 no fault of the “voucher.” Its failure re- 
 sulted in part from the looseness or im- 
 practicability of the terms, but largely from 
 the inclusion of objectionable material in 
 the boxes of an importing firm that had se- 
 cured its license directly. 
 
 It was the protraction of this difficulty 
 that led in November 1916 to the appoint- 
 ment of the A. L. A. Committee on Impor- 
 tations, consisting of Messrs. Frank P. Hill 
 (Chairman), E. H. Anderson, C. W. An- 
 drews and M. Llewellyn Raney (Secre- 
 tary). The Committee repaired at once to 
 Washington, and, after conferences ar- 
 ranged by Dr. Putnam with the Foreign 
 Trade Advisers of the State Department 
 and the British Embassy, and inquiries of 
 New York importers, drew up a memoran- 
 dum, which the State Department adopted 
 
3 
 
 for presentation to the British Foreign 
 Office. 
 
 This document recited difficulties and pro- 
 posed remedies. The result was an order to 
 release material detained at Rotterdam, and 
 the abrogation of the permit system. Amer- 
 ica’s severance of diplomatic relations and 
 entry into the war, while the question was 
 under discussion eased the whole situation 
 of course. Amelioration of a condition was 
 what we had sought, but the condition itself 
 was abolished — a gratifying outcome. 
 
 In this effort to modify a British order 
 our best help came from British citizens. 
 To Sir William Osier, Regius Professor of 
 Medicine at Oxford, and Mr. John Y. W. 
 MacAlister,- President of the Library Asso- 
 ciation and Secretary of the Royal Society 
 of Medicine, a statement of the difficulty 
 had been early sent. Sir William acted 
 instantly, and Mr. MacAlister never abated 
 his representations in behalf of our program 
 till a timely letter of his to the Foreign 
 Office admittedly brought the matter to a 
 head and a happy issue. Further, if the 
 story may be anticipated, it was the testi- 
 mony of his teeming shelves, among others, 
 that a year later served to win from Wash- 
 ington the permission to expand American 
 practice to the Allies’ generous limits. 
 
 Well, the material went on shipboard, the 
 system into the discard, and the Commit- 
 tee*' set out for Louisville with swelling 
 fronts. But the game was young yet, and 
 before it ended three of the members were 
 stretched on the ground while the fourth 
 was on his knees computing his losses and 
 sending up thanks to heaven that the war 
 had not been conducted by diplomats. Only 
 strong hearts should enter diplomacy. It 
 is like boxing in a dress suit. Either your 
 blow is weak, or you split your coat. In 
 either case you lose. 
 
 It was Germany’s move next and they 
 threatened to sink the vessel if it sailed. 
 So the Dutch Government held it in port 
 and the boxes waited two weary years 
 longer in Rotterdam till we went after them 
 in person and brought them over. 
 
 But what the Dutch vessels would not do 
 in the Atlantic could be done in the North 
 Sea, and a bit of shirtsleeve diplomacy 
 
 leagued with the Navy brought them the 
 rest of the way. So that for seventeen 
 months our material has crossed without 
 the loss of a page. 
 
 The Trading-with-the-Enemy Act had 
 given the opportunity for a straight Ameri- 
 can policy and so a license was granted to 
 the 
 
 “American Library Association of the 
 United States, acting on behalf of uni- 
 versities, colleges, public institutions of 
 approved character in the United States, 
 to trade with booksellers and publishers 
 in various places in Germany and Austria, 
 by importing into the United States cer- 
 tain publications of serial character and 
 otherwise issued in Germany or countries 
 allied with Germany, andr such publica- 
 tions to be of a character likely to as- 
 sist important work of research in science 
 and scholarship; Provided, however, that 
 such importations shall be carried out by 
 a method to be arranged and approved 
 by the State Department, and that such 
 importations shall be subject to such su- 
 pervision as the State Department may 
 see fit to exercise ; and Provided, further 
 that the admission of all such publica- 
 tions into the United States shall be sub- 
 ject to the approval of the Censorship 
 Board.” 
 
 The proviso of the State Department con- 
 trol over the particular license — a sugges- / 
 tion of ours, as indeed were all its terms — 
 was due to the case’s diplomatic implica- 
 tion. The requirement for censorship was 
 patently imperative. On this score it may 
 be reported with the utmost satisfaction that 
 there has not be$n a single excision, so 
 thorogoing were the safeguards we threw 
 about the service. 
 
 The Department’s preferred plan was that 
 a representative of the Association should 
 take residence at Berne and control all the 
 processes of acquisition and distribution 'for 
 both the Government and the libraries. The 
 compromise procedure adopted in view of 
 the Secretary’s imminent departure on an- 
 other mission for the Association, called 
 for the Committee’s dispatch of an order 
 for a select list of 255 periodicals to Hol- 
 land, to be filled by whatever dealers were 
 
4 
 
 found satisfactorily employed by the Allies, 
 and to be shipped under seal via England, 
 provided assurances were given for unin- 
 terrupted passage thru British territory. 
 These were forthcoming at once, the plan 
 was presented in London, and the order 
 of 102 institutions for the year 1918 of these 
 journals went to a dealer at The Hague. 
 For a time the Department thought the 
 employment of American agents possible, 
 but the experience of ‘the Allies was ad- 
 verse and their method of trading with 
 neutrals was adopted. The bookdealers 
 had of course no grievances whatever, 
 since the law against trading with the 
 enemy applied as much to them as to the 
 multitudinous other forms of business 
 stopped by the war. It was the institutions 
 that had the claim to exception and theirs 
 was allowed. 
 
 The limitation of the initial order to 
 255 periodicals was due both to the Censor- 
 ship Board’s unpreparedness for a more 
 formidable task of examination, and to our 
 general ignorance of the Allies’ practice. 
 It had been quite widely asserted f for ex- 
 ample, that scientific journals were not 
 reaching England at all, but only abstracts 
 made in Holland. This called for investi- 
 gation there and in France. The result of 
 these two reports was announced at Sara- 
 toga Springs. The Secretary of State had 
 cabled his approval and the bars were down. 
 The libraries might order their accustomed 
 periodicals, and but for the Committee’s 
 lack of clerical facilities, together with its 
 conviction that only books of emergency 
 should be secured, the service might have 
 been expanded in that direction as well. 
 The new privilege was widely embraced. 
 
 A further result was a joint proposal 
 from the State Department, War Trade 
 and Censorship Boards that the Committee 
 extend its functions to include all applica- 
 tions, but its spokesman felt compelled to 
 confine its responsibilities to libraries; so 
 that the idea of providing for others was 
 abandoned. 
 
 With the dispatch of that first order to 
 The Hague began a train of difficulties 
 which taxed resourcefulness to the utmost 
 and would have dragged us down to defeat 
 
 but for a cheerful determination to win at 
 any cost short of crime. 
 
 1. It took three weeks instead of a day 
 for the order to travel from London to 
 The Hague. 
 
 2. It had hardly arrived when Dutch ship- 
 ping was requisitioned by the Allies and 
 in retaliation not a vessel crossed to Eng- 
 land for a month. It looked as if the 
 pretty scheme had died a-borning and the 
 Dutch agent had the body. 
 
 A cablegram was rushed to the State 
 Department asking if further orders might 
 not be shifted to Switzerland provided the 
 same arrangement for passage could be 
 made with the French Government as had 
 been effected with the British. The an- 
 swer being quickly “aye” from both Wash- 
 ington and Paris, the few belated orders 
 in hand (as well as the later larger crop 
 resulting from the Saratoga Report) were 
 accordingly sent to Geneva. This opened 
 an interesting and profitable experience, for 
 the present head of the firm patronized is 
 an American lady who has taken great pride 
 in serving her f ellow countrymen during this 
 emergency. 
 
 3. The goods came to Rotterdam but the 
 shipping company refused to accept them 
 without specific orders from London. This 
 cablegram reached me less than twenty- 
 four hours before sailing time. It was life 
 in a taxicab that day, with the final promise 
 to ship at once exacted as a courtesy to the 
 State Department by telephone while the 
 train drew into the station. They crossed. 
 
 4. The first message received in America 
 stated that on arrival in London the boxes 
 were found to lack the promised seal and 
 so had been seized by the Government. 
 There had been a crossing of diplomatic 
 signals, and it took four months of burn- 
 ing the wires and feeding the pouch to 
 clear the boxes and land them in New 
 York. 
 
 5. An American importer had meanwhile 
 published a report that without his author- 
 ization his Leipzig office had subscribed 
 for half the usual number of serials; so he 
 could help his clients in 1918 after all, 
 maugre his October disclaimer. But as 
 the chairman of the Committee, playing 
 
safe, had not communicated the Secretary’s 
 advices, the libraries did not know wha' 
 to do ; so they lay low for the traveler. 
 
 6. Their mystification was complete when 
 a little later they received from Holland an 
 acknowledgment of their unknown order. 
 102 librarians caught in the dark and all 
 talking at once ! Furthermore, the circu- 
 lar enlarged upon the writer’s ability to 
 supply them other like material. This 
 aroused the wrath of the War Trade Board, 
 for it was an u ninvit ing incitement to break 
 the American law. The librarians lay a 
 little lower. 
 
 The Saratoga Report, aided by the 
 Fourth of July division, burked mob vio- 
 lence. 
 
 7. The bills arrived from Holland and 
 proved excessive. Get Even Somehow and 
 Co. rushed to mimeograph with a denun- 
 ciation, but failed to cover the rear, for a 
 little reconnoitering discovered their prices 
 under parallel conditions in 1917 to have 
 been higher still. That particular gho-t 
 was not laid till after a chase of ten months 
 and 4000 miles, but it died nobly. 
 
 8. Next came the panicky advice to re- 
 order everything stored in Leipzig because 
 of supposedly impending confiscation. A 
 bulletin (one of ten issued at intervals to 
 reduce correspondence) was necessary to 
 calm distraught nerves. 
 
 9. Then appeared the wild canard that 
 the War Trade Board had sent an agent 
 to Rotterdam to seize and sell American 
 goods then awaiting shipment. Librarians 
 should protest. The precincts of the Board 
 were filled with the bleating of the af- 
 frighted. They heaved a brick at the in- 
 truder, and another pastoral to the flock 
 brought a long silence. 
 
 10. With peace at home, there remained 
 the siege at Rotterdam to be raised, but 
 there were no funds in sight. However, 
 to the high finance that had conducted a 
 $60,000, importation business without clerks, 
 and with an expenditure of $300 by the 
 
 157 stockholders had brought them a profit 
 of $9000 to date (not to mention 1917), 
 that problem was easy. Had not the Paris 
 Peace Conference consecrated the word“re- 
 paration” ? 
 
 11. But the expedition itself seemed hope- 
 less. Was not every approach guarded? 
 All but one little wicket in the rear, and 
 it took no Epialtes to find it. The rescue 
 was celebrated at Asbury Park. 
 
 12. Finally came the tidings of disaster by 
 fire, but for once Providence was not on 
 the side of the heavy artillery, for the 
 State Department had at last consented to 
 demobilize the remnants, of a weary and 
 battle-scarred committee. 
 
 To the officials of the Department of 
 State, War Trade and Censorship Boards; 
 to the lamented Ambassador in London! 
 who made of his chancellery not an office 
 merely, but a hearthstone ; to the Embassy 
 in Paris for effective help; to the Lega- 
 tion at The Hague (including Paul and not 
 omitting Engert), which carried a disa- 
 greeable burden graciously; to the Lega- 
 tion at Berne (including Moran, who not 
 only shipped the material but tagged the 
 sacks and sent them on by courier) ; to the 
 officials of His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 
 Board of Trade and Postal Censorship for 
 courteous cooperation ; to the Ministere des 
 Affaires Etrangeres and their representa- 
 tive in Switzerland, Prof. Albert Leclere, 
 for generous aid given; to the officials of 
 the British Museum, London Library, Royal 
 Society of Medicine, Bibliotheque Natio- 
 nale, Sorbonne and Library of Congress for 
 access to records ; to the American Consuls 
 in London and Rotterdam, and the Dutch 
 Consul in London, for personal kindness, 
 as well as official aid, our libraries, including 
 eight big Government Departments, are 
 under lasting obligation. ^Jt was a long, 
 hard pull with some bitter denunciation, but 
 how well worth while in such goodly com- 
 pany. 
 
 Ave atque vale, E. T. L. 1727. 
 
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