Mr. BOWKER said, that as he rose to propose on the part of the United States members of the American Library Association a vote of thanks, he wished to express the equal gratification of our fellow members that we have received the hospitality, so unbounded, of the administration of Canada, and especially that we had been thus welcomed by the man whose presence personifies and whose name is a synonym not only for his own party but for United Canada. He said the United States members took only one exception to what he had said, and that was that they used the word "American" in a broader sense than he. The American Library Association means, not the United States, not Canada, but both. We have no United States library association. We may almost hope that there shall be no Canada library association, but we hope that Ontario, with its library association, will be the pioneer to lead its sister provinces into the fellowship and affiliation in which our other associations stand in the American library association.
The speaker said it was not only in the brilliant and eloquent pages of Parkman that the history of the two sister nations was interwoven; that a man from Woburn, Massachusetts, was the first to see what the site of Ottawa meant; that our own Thwaites had brought anew to life the deeds of the Jesuit fathers and early explorers, and that Miss Plummer had personally conducted many thousands of boys and girls of the children's rooms through Canada with her "Roy and Ray."
Mr. Bowker said he supposed we did not rightly recognize Canadian writers in the United States libraries because they were so thoroughly a part of English literature, and that it would be very grateful if some one so good as Mr. Hardy, the secretary of the Ontario library association, could before the close of the meetings give a bird's-eye view of Canadian writers.
"It is a significant coincidence that on this very day there goes into operation throughout the British Empire a law which, if not for the first time, at least most explicitly, recognizes the relationship of the several English nations to the motherland, for the new copyright code which today goes into operation states in so many words that the self-governing dominions of Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa may adopt the imperial act, or modify it to meet their own judicial process, or legislate independently. It is interesting to some of us that this recognition should be so explicitly made in the field of letters."
In closing, the speaker proposed that we express our thanks to our Canadian brethren, our hosts who have been so hospitable, by a rising vote.
Amid hearty applause the entire audience arose.
The CHAIRMAN: Before it became necessary for Dr. Otto Klotz, who was and is chairman of the local committee, to be absent from the city, I had agreed to deliver an address to the convention on Conservation in Canada. The time having come, on the program, for that event, I propose now to tell you a little of what we in Canada are doing to conserve the best we have.
CONSERVATION OF CHARACTER
We are all concerned for the good name of our community, for its reputation and its character. Most of us are concerned for the welfare of our nation, for its place of honor and influence and power among the nations of the earth. Canada is one of the youngest among the self governing peoples. It is only forty-five years since we became a Dominion, and we begin only now to find ourselves as a nation. A people who gain self-government become in reality a nation only when they are animated by some dominant purpose to preserve their ideals by further achievement. The preservation of whatever we have found to be worthy in the past,—the good, the true, and the beautiful,—by using them in everyday life for further accomplishment and attainment,—that is conservation. There have been rotations of nations and of civilizations on the face of the earth, as there have been rotations of crops on the fields of the farm. This year's crop is for its own harvest and also to prepare the land for the crop to follow it. The far foresight which peers thoughtfully into eternity while planning for tomorrow is also a part of conservation.
In common use the word "conservation" becomes a bland and comprehensive expression into which we put all our scattered convictions and aspirations and gropings after what is best for the largest number of people for the longest stretch of time. It took on a new meaning when Theodore Roosevelt used his megaphone on it. And because it is an omnibus with room always for one more,—for one more idea, one more suggestion, one more policy, it becomes mightily popular.