Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - General Index.djvu/7

 PREFACE.

AT the end of every sixth year the publication of a new General Index has given the Editor of NOTES AND QUERIES the opportunity of addressing his correspondents. As each turn has come round, the burden of the pleasant little address has been much the same : con- gratulation on the flourishing continuance, now so prolonged, of what seemed at first a happy but perhaps venturesome enterprise ; the kindly and regretful commemoration of those of " the band of brothers " who, in the course of the six years, had passed away ; a warm welcome to new pens, and some rapid review of those well-known ends which NOTES AND QUERIES was founded to serve. Each writer, at the moment of composing his Pre- face, stood close upon the boundary of the period he was writing of ; the General Index thus introduced wasjj separated only by a few months from the Series of which it was the Summary, and the work and interests it represented were still fresh in every reader's mind.

Very different is the history of the Eleven$i Series. It ended with the last number for December, 1915, and not until this year has it been found possible to compile and publish its General Index. Moreover, the Preface to the Index has to be dated from a new Office. The history of this change, and of the four intervening years which led up to it, belongs, however, to the Twelfth Series of which the General Index is itself not far off. Our present concern is with the past.

In September, 1916, a Swiss Press-cutting Agency sent us a cutting, from the Frank- furter Zeitung in which NOTES AND QUERIES was quoted, and referred to as " that English weekly, now come to an end through the war " (diese jetzt im Kriege eingegangene englische Wochenschrift). No, we did not come to an end in the war ! That we did not do so, that during the whole of the war and for a year afterwards NOTES AND QUERIES con- tinued to be printed and published at the old Office which had been its home for so many years, was owing to the steady fidelity of its friends ; in great part to their generous gifts of money ; not less and perhaps, to the Editor's sense, even more gratefully to the persistence of their active interest in the paper, the continued abundance and liveliness of the correspondence. At the end of 1915, after more than a year of the war, but little diminution was to be detected in the vitality of ' N. & Q. '

Looking back then, as if from the summer of 1916, the present Editor would wish to re-echo all that has been said, with such evident pleasure and sincerity, by former Editors in their Prefaces, as to their satisfaction in their task ; and to do so with some additional warmth of expression. For all the values attached to the learning and ingenuity, the friendly good-will and enthusiasm of which our columns are the meeting-place have been enhanced by the war ; and correspondingly enhanced, then, the privilege of the person whose business it has been to make the^e available.

During the war there inevitably arose the question how much of the inheritance of letters would be carried through to the peace. What people call "live " literature stood in little danger : there would always be readers for fiction, books of travel, essays on current topics, and, to some extent, for new poetry. But would the care for the past, intimate affectionate care for its detail, which gives depth and mellowness to the literary character and consciousness of a nation as a whole would that survive ? And suppose, despite the treasures collected in its service, it should perish even -if it were for no more than a generation or two would not some of the richest threads in the web of civilisation drop out of sight ?

The books and periodicals published during the war soon set that sort of anxiety at rest. It is a matter of great satisfaction that, in this particular "carrying on" of the first importance as we believe it to have been our own supporters and correspondents bore a definite part ; so that NOTES AND QUERIES, to its long series of problems set or solved and of curious facts recorded, may add as yet another claim to regard, a tacit defiance of brute force and a cheerful witness to the true scholar's faith in the indestructibility of learning.

FLORENCE HAYLLAR, Printing House Square, E.G., August, 1920.