THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

thought had he dwelt over fifty years before as a young man
in a train, travelling to visit a «princesse Iointaine» in Munich.
His choice had to be Cato for «she is a living reality and 5
she is for me the highest concrete representation of Humanity
which in my work is an abstraction. To make a living and
loved being suffer for an ideal and problematical being. No.»
In practical terms he decided to put Cato first and do much
less for his work though he continued to hope for the longexpected
miracle. 53
The miracle did not occur. The government granted Otle J
new quarters and resumed them at once for War. Upon the
German occupation of Brussels the Palais du Cinquantenaire
was requisitioned for enemy troops. Otlet sought permission
from the Ville de Bruxelles to take over an old University
building near the Pare Leopold. He was granted the use of
this building and moved all the collections of the Palais
Mondial thither, though not before the Germans had destroyed
sixty-three tons of periodical publications. After the move,
as Lorphevre wryly remarked, «the situation was no better;
no subsidy, no Belgian or foreign donations and... no heat». 54
Otlet and his assistants, however, created some sort of order
in the collections in the new building, at once called the
Mundaneum, as it is still to-day.
There, in the last few, sombre years of his life, Otlet
worked, conscious of the black shadow of War and a mad 1
demagogue, and careful of his duty to Cato. But he did work,
and in the very year of his death gave at the new Mundaneum
the twelfth session of a week-long Course on Documentation
which he had devised. 55 In 1943 La Fontaine, a man rich in
eighty-nine work-filled, useful years, died. The loss to Otlet
was enormous, for even though in their later years they worked
very little together, they kept constantly in touch, speaking
for hours together on the telephone. 56 A year later on the 10th
December 1944, having worked with Lorphevre that day until
seven in the evening, Otlet died.
FOOTNOTES
1. «L'Annee 1930—1931», Palais Mondial,
1930), 22.
Nos. 13—14 (July—October
2. «,Programme des conferences publiques», and ^Conferences donnees pendant
le l er trimestre 1930», Palais
11—12 and 16.
Mondial, No. 12 (April 1930),
3. «Conferences, oours,
1931), 12.
demonstrations*, Palais Mondial, No. 16 (March
4. «Les Jeunes Amis du Palais Mondial», Palais Mondial, Nos. 13—14
(July —October, 1930), 7.
5. Ibid.
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