MISSION OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
It is our business in this country to get at the best methods to govern ourselves. How many of our best people have paused to reflect on what that means, and on all it means? It means that now we have about 80,000,000 of sovereigns. It was all very well when we were a little confederation of homogeneous stock stretching along the Atlantic sea-board. We had our dissensions then, but our population was permeated with the principles of our government. In one hundred years we have swelled from a handful to 80,000,000, and a large part of them made up of additions from the nations of the earth, and not the self-governing nations. And the problem is to educate the children of these, as well as our own children, in the principles of that government of which they are an essential and vital part.
This is the first problem, and if it is not attended to, our government will crumble away and decay from neglect. We do not want denizens in this state and this nation, we want citizens. We do not want ward politics, but we do want government as our forefathers understood it. And it is the duty of every right-minded citizen to work unfalteringly for this end. The question is one of expediency.
We want citizens. And the public school and the public library are the places where citizens are made. Therefore we must labor for and support these institutions first and foremost. To a very great extent, the librarian is the custodian of public morals and the moulder of public men.
The librarian must, and he usually does, feel his responsibility. The word "responsibility" should be given equal weight with the word "liberty" and emblazoned beside it, and it is these two things that the public librarian through his knowledge of good literature must impress upon our coming generations—"liberty and responsibility."
WINSTON CHURCHILL.