JUNE 26-JULY 2, 1912

PRELIMINARY SESSION

(Wednesday evening, June 26, 1912, Russell Theatre)

The association convened in a preliminary session on Wednesday evening, June 26, with Dr. James W. Robertson, C. M. G., chairman of the Canadian royal commission on industrial training and technical education, presiding as acting chairman of the Ottawa local committee.

Hon. George H. Perley, acting prime minister of Canada, was introduced and welcomed the association to Canada on behalf of the Dominion government. The speaker called attention to the hundred years of peace between the two countries and the plans being formulated for celebrating it, and said that international conferences such as this were the best guarantees of peace; that the more we know of each other the less liable we were to get into trouble.

In Canada schools and libraries are growing apace, particularly in the new regions of the far west, very much the same as in the United States. Exchange of ideas as in this convention is the very best kind of reciprocity and will help both nations in their aims and aspirations for the good of civilization.

Comptroller E. H. Hinchey, the acting mayor of Ottawa, spoke the city's welcome, calling attention to Ottawa as a convention city and its growing claims for being considered the Washington of the North.

The association was graciously welcomed in behalf of the Women's Canadian Club of Ottawa by the president, Mrs. Adam Shortt, who also voiced the welcome from the Women's National Council of Canada. She said the preachers, the teachers, the writers and the librarians are four great standing armies, standing to protect us and to dispel the hydra-headed enemy Ignorance, but that she thought of librarians as captains of individual garrisons scattered here and there through towns and cities, who are sending out emissaries among the people and moulding and forming the mental and moral fibre of each community.

The CHAIRMAN: The Women's Canadian historical society was most kind in pressing forward its desire to have this convention held here. The president, however, desires not to speak to-night.

I have now the pleasure of asking Hon. John G. Foster, United States Consul-General, to speak, as one of ourselves. He is a good citizen, and though of you, with us—we count him almost one of ourselves.

Mr. Foster said he could have assured that portion of the delegates who were his fellow countrymen and countrywomen that they would feel very much at home in this country, whose people, institutions and traditions are so similar to those of the United States.

The CHAIRMAN: Many other representative bodies joined in the effort to secure this meeting for Ottawa and are represented on the platform to-night, but the only other speaker who I shall ask to voice for them or for himself welcoming sentiments is the Hon. Martin Burrell, Minister of agriculture, and, if I may say in parenthesis, also Minister of copyrights, since that comes within his department.

Minister Burrell spoke enthusiastically of the value of books and the habit of good reading and the greater ease with which books could now be secured than formerly. Continuing he said:

"I have heard it said by some skeptical gentlemen that it is true that a librarian never reads a book; in fact, that he cannot be a perfect librarian and read, because he is immediately lost. I do not like to hold that view. I rather hold to the view that the ordinary librarian, perhaps I should say the model librarian, should be a guide, philosopher and friend, and I do not doubt that many of you are very real guides, philosophers and friends to those who are seeking for perhaps they know not what and whom you can direct in right channels with incalculable good to their after life. It is absolutely true that in our modern life we need that guidance. I do not know that I could put it better than in the words of another great book lover, and good library lover too, our friend Robert Louis Stevenson of imperishable memory, who said once there was a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people in the world who if they were not engaged in a conventional occupation were in a state of coma; that the few hours they did not dedicate to a furious toiling in the gold mill were an absolute blank. It is your high privilege to supply that blank; it is your priceless privilege to fill the hours of life which have to be a blank because we cannot train ourselves for them in this more material age,—to fill them up with a companionship and with an influence of the great thoughts of the great writers of all ages."

Concluding, he expressed his pleasure at the prospect of entertaining the delegates at the Experimental Farm on the following Saturday.

The CHAIRMAN: The real president of the Canadian Club found it impossible to be in Ottawa to-night, and I am the poor substitute for Dr. Otto J. Klotz, who has been a great pillar of strength in Ottawa to those who love books and use books. He deputed me to say that he was exceedingly sorry he could not meet so many old friends of his as would surely be in attendance, and still more sorry because he was deprived of the joy of thus paying a little more back to those who love books and use books for all that books and learning have done for him. He is one of our good men. I am sorry he is not here.

We are delighted to have a woman as your president; and in calling on Mrs. Elmendorf to respond may I say—this comes to me after meeting her yesterday and today—that she is altogether a woman of whom it may be said in relation to her office as president of the American Library Association, "thy gentleness has helped to make it great."

The PRESIDENT: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the American Library Association,—I am sure that I but express what you are all feeling in saying that this royal welcome to the Dominion of Canada makes us not only happy but very much honored. Some members of the association are already at home in their own capital, being keepers of "kings' treasuries" of Canada itself. Others of us are librarians from hither and yon in the country beyond the border, but we have all come with "joy and goodly gree" to sit in council in the very capital of the lovely land which is so loyally and affectionately

"Daughter in her Mother's house."

A small party of us came across the border, as William Morris's heroes are wont to move, "by night and cloud," and when we reached the boundary line a sudden inspiration took us and we stooped down and silently, gently gathered that boundary line in our hands and brought its firm lengths with us. I hold what might represent its shining links here in my hands. Therefore, while we visit here with you, in the very capital of the Dominion, while we hold that boundary line thus in our possession, from Boston Harbor down the coast through New York and Charleston to Key West, along the Gulf to New Orleans, across the great West to Pasadena, up the Pacific coast line to Seattle, from East to West, from North to South, there is no let or hindrance to the lines of influence which go forth. Those lines of influence run free without chance for knot or tangle or any such thing.

I hope you will not need to try whether "the King's writ runs" but I am sure that you will find that Shakespeare reigns in our realm, that Tennyson and Bobby Burns touch our hearts in song, and he who writes the songs of a people need not care who writes their laws.

Just one small story and then I shall have finished, for thanks must needs be brief if they come from the heart, and there is one to come after who will say to you with grace and directness and clear precision much that I might envy but never approach.

My tall brother happened by good fortune to be in London Town the night that the great city went nearly wild in her glad rejoicing at the relief of Ladysmith. It was a sight to see and join in, and he and his wife went on such progress through the streets as a cab could make for them. In his hand, at the full length of his long arm, he waved from the front of the cab a Union Jack and a Stars and Stripes to indicate his sympathy and good feeling. All went well until in one of the many enforced pauses a rough chap jumped for his hand crying, "Aw, sir! One flag'll do!"

We are very happy to be here and are just a little happier to see by these beautiful draped banners that you have not felt that One flag need to do!

The CHAIRMAN: Those of us who have gone to Washington have sometimes thought we should revise our boyhood's interpretation of the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation. Nothing I had ever imagined from St. John's description was quite a match for the glory and magnificence of the beautiful Library of Congress. I have found it delightful to think of a nation of great wealth providing such a fitting home for its literary treasures. Books are the friends and ministers of the mind and the soul of the people. The Washington building is the expression in materials of their aspirations for what is best and most beautiful. It is a wonderful building, leaving impressions of wonder on the casual visitor, and still more on those who linger in its chaste corridors and see something of the working of the library itself. I think of the sweet and stately beauty of the place, I think of the institution and its services, and I think also of the man who is more than a match for the magnificence of the home of those books. We will now hear from the man, Dr. HERBERT PUTNAM.