"Glories of our blood and state,"
it need not, it does not, even divide, still less alienate, the two peoples.
It is one of the worthiest, most auspicious foundations of the American Library Association that it is, and has ever been, continental not national in its sympathy and membership. Within its circle "all who profess and call themselves" English-speaking may unite their best thought and their best endeavor for this important public service.
There are many fundamental library principles that are common to both countries and your Program Committee has intended to arrange the program and discussions to take account of these, leaving to other and minor meetings such things as are national or local in their bearing. The committee has wished to transcend all division by boundary lines. By so much the jest was fact.
The attempt has been made to stand away from detail of all sorts so far that it may be possible to see the library world as "a world" indeed, "a whole of parts," as a system of members, each member distinct yet, by virtue of the very peculiarities which constitute its distinctness, contributing to the unity of the whole.
We shall fail to see the library world thus, as a world, as a whole unless, amid the mass of facts, of experiences, of needs, of adaptations involved, we can finally discern and seize upon the true center, the truly dominant thing.
If we could once see the true center as the center, and the mass of detail taking ordered place about it; if we could once perceive the dominant that should surely rule, and lesser matters in due subjection to that rule, then from the obvious things ever before our eyes, and only too familiar, by that very familiarity made difficult to apprehend, the library might all at once appeal as an entity, as a clear conception. So the forest becomes visible to the artist's eyes, the forest, formed of trees, but never really seen until all at once in the vision of the forest the trees are lost to sight.
Some modes of thought, some phrases of expression which have been used are those which the philosopher has weighed and clarified for his own carefully measured statements. Do not smile at my temerity, and on the other hand do not be in the least alarmed. I ventured but a little way and you will not be called to go far into the philosopher's country under my lead. Even if one be no swimmer it is an experience to venture out, with careful balance, feeling for secure foothold upon the solid bed, even a little way into a mighty stream whose full mid-current would sweep over one's head. One gets, out of even so limited an adventure, a sense of the sweep of the river, feels the embrace and pull of the current, stoops to drink a little of the clear, bright, deep waters, ever thereafter to thirst for deeper draughts and to long for strength and mastery to plunge into and breast the full stream.
In trying to find warrant for my own thoughts and ordered and lucid statement for them, I have sought and consulted certain books and some of them were too hard for my full reading. I shall not further acknowledge my debt now but, once more departing from precedent, I shall list them for print at the end of the address.