Sometime about the early spring of 1910 some Senator had introduced in the Senate a resolution providing for the purchase by the Government of a number of paintings that nobody wanted to buy and under the rule that resolution was referred to the Committee on the Library. The responsibility for protecting the Government against a waste of money was thus thrown upon the Committee. A little discussion developed the fact that all the members of the Committee had an uncomfortable feeling that the pictures were probably worthless and no such purchase ought to be made but that no member of the Committee felt any such confidence in his own knowledge and judgment about such things as to feel like making a report to the Senate based on his opinion, and maintaining that opinion on the floor. We all felt that the Committee ought to have some way of getting an expert opinion to guide it in making its report. In the discussion we recalled Theodore Roosevelt’s appointment of a Fine Arts Council, which fell to the ground because it had no legal standing, and we recalled also the advantage received from the report of park development of the informal commission selected by the McMillan Committee, and we finally determined to ask Congress to provide for the appointment of a fine arts commission which would meet the need that our Committee was then experiencing and a similar need which was liable to occur in a multitude of cases under which Government officers had to pass on questions of art without being really competent to perform such a duty. * * * I drafted a very brief statute * * * and a little informal explanation of the need which the Committee felt for expert assistance in the performing of its duties carried the bill through. And so, without creation of any power of legal compulsion, there was brought to the service of the Government the authority of competent opinion upon questions of art arising in the course of administration, and widespread and habitual deference to such an opinion has saved the Government and the community from God knows how many atrocities. From the time of its establishment, the Commission has been consulted about every detail of the progress of the Plan of Washington, and also about many works of art for which the Government makes appropriations. This includes also works of art which our Government, as a result of congressional enactment, presents to the governments and the peoples of other countries to express our friendship and good will, or erects for the use of our diplomatic corps abroad, or to perpetuate the memory of our soldiers’ deeds of daring and courage. Good examples are the statue of Leif Ericsson to Iceland, the statue of Henry Clay to Venezuela, the American Embassy Building in Japan, and the World War Memorials in Europe.