A cablegram yesterday said that the notables of London want to give Chicago a valuable library. Disraeli, Foster, Argyle, Carlyle and others have promised to cooperate. A gift of that type would be today more welcome to Chicago than ever before. From Germany one has not heard, that anybody is even aware of the intellectual needs of the 100,000 Germans in Chicago....almost all private and club libraries have been burnt, and if we are not to get an intellectual proletariat (footnote: this expression is here obviously used in a different sense in which it is commonly used today), something unusual and on a large scale must be done with the help of our whole country and our co-nationals in Europe.

... The Chicago Germans have so far done nothing toward the creation of a library. All that has happened is that the book stores and lending libraries, with the exception of one, have lost their supply. There is not the slightest chance that a German Reading Association will be formed. Our Chicago Germans will give individually and collectively - not a cent for the purpose of adult education, except in the form of a general tax that the city might raise for the founding and upkeep of a free public library.