About one-half of the area covered in France by the American expeditionary force has received its first sprinkling of books. The distribution is proceeding rapidly and next July there will be established in Paris a central reference library of 10,000 volumes, available to any American soldier in France. Upon application of a but secretary, any book in the Paris Library will be sent anywhere in France free of charge.

At every book, the men find a poster which reads: "These books are loaned on the honor system. If you fail, it fails. America is far away, tongue scarce and books precious, play square with the other fellow; he has played square with you."

Fiction Predominates.
The books sent to Europe have been of two kinds, those contributed and those purchased by the funds of the association, which have amounted to $1,000,000. The variety of contributed books is astounding and ranges from many stories to theological treatises, from murder yarns to Milton's poems, Fiction, of course, predominates.

No army in history ever read so universally as has the American army in France. The men are greedy for books. In the days when the supply was inadequate, the demand was so great that a doughboy who had taken over in his barrack bag a copy of O. Henry's "The Four Million" split it into pamphlets, each containing one of the author's short stories. He passed the copies, thus abbreviated, along the line, and they literally were read to pieces. 