The fellow with a page or two has quite other preoccupations. Where’s a photo, or a cartoon? Must have a headline to break the solidity of this close-packed column of print. How about a funny column? That gifted person, Heywood Broun, taking charge of the book pages of the New York _Tribune_, announces that he is in favor of anything that will make book reviewing exciting. Nothing can make book reviewing exciting except book reporting and the books themselves; but if Broun is looking for excitement he will find it while filling the rôle of a literary editor. Before long he will learn that everybody in the world who is not the author of a book wants to review books--and some who are authors are willing to double in both parts. Also, a considerable number of books are published annually in these still United States and a considerable percentage of those published find their way to the literary editor. It is no joke to receive, list with descriptions and sort out for assignment or non-assignment an average of 1,500 volumes a year, nor to assign to your book reporters, with as much infallibility in choosing the reporter as possible, perhaps half of the 1,500. Likewise there are assignments which several reporters want, a single book bespoken by four persons, maybe; and there are book assignments that are received with horror or sometimes with unflinching bravery by the good soldier. To hand a man, for instance, the extremely thick two-volume _History of Labour in the United States_ by Professor Commons and his associates is like pinning a decoration on him for limitless valor under fire--only the decoration bears a strong resemblance to the Iron Cross. 3 Advertising? Newspapers depend upon advertising for their existence, let alone their profits, in most instances. Of course, if there were no such things as advertisements we should still have newspapers. The news must be had. Presumably people would simply pay more for it, or pay as much in a more direct way. What is true of newspapers is true of parts of newspapers. The fact that a new book is news, and, as such, a thing that must more or less widely but indispensably be reported, is attested by the maintenance of book columns and pages in many newspapers where book advertising there is none. The people who read the Boston _Evening Transcript_, for example, would hardly endure the abolition of its book pages whether publishers used them to advertise in or not.