THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

his fellow stagiaires and later Belgian statesman, Henri Carton
de Wiart, has described those lively days in his reminiscences
of their maltre, Picard. 1 Brussels was a self-consciously
provincial town moving towards the international
eminence it enjous today. Along the fashionable Avenue Louise,
on the heights of the town, all the young, the wealthy, those
rising in society, those received into it, carried out the ritual
of seeing and being seen. The world of commerce and the
world of the poor lay, as it still does, below. At the
head of the Avenue Louise, ponderous and vast and towering
above the city, stood the Palais de Justice. In its corridors
echoed all the rumours and scandals of the city. The encounters
of lawyers, clients and clerks as they went about their
affairs offered opportunity a thousand times a day for the
airing and promotion of the controversies of the time. Here
Otlet circulated with Picard and his fellow clerks. Inevitably
his acquaintance extended. He joined various clubs and associations
such as the Cercle du Jeune Barreau de Bruxelles in
whose journal, Palais, he began to publish articles, 2 the Groupe
de Ligogne, and the Association et Compte Rendu du
Journal a.p