Madame Pandit Speaks
About Columbia's International Role
 

The for/i/er President of the United Nations General Assembly
challenges Columbia, its library and its friends to help revive the
"life of the mind" as a contribution to international understanding.
We print below the most thought-provoking passages from the
address delivered at the Bicentennial Meeting of the Friends,
•which was held in the Rotmida of Loiv Memorial Library on
September 2^.

IT GOES without saying that a great institution of learning
like this which educates not only thousands of Americans but
students from many countries, and its influential alumni and
supporters, have a direct responsibility in promoting peace and
understanding. A special part of that responsibility devolves on
libraries.

I would like to illustrate this point by a reference to a very mod¬
est library, indeed, by comparison with this great institution, the
Delhi Public Library, a project on which UNESCO has given
valuable assistance to the Government of India. Less than a year
after its opening, this Library, designed to meet the needs of the
newly literate, has over 2,000 visitors a day, most of them from the
humblest le\'cls of the population. Its poorly-bound volumes are
so well thumbed that the rate of replacement is three or four times
the normal, and I might add that half the turnover is for serious
non-fiction books. Thanks to a generous gift from the Pennsyl¬
vania Education Association a mobile van has been purchased to
try to lessen the hardship on villagers who walked ten or more
miles to the Library.

That example shows the genuine thirst for knowledge among
the masses of our population and their ready recognition of the