The American citizen to-day cannot easily appreciate the full value of William McKinley’s life work. It was not his career as a soldier, his record as a lawyer, his achievements in the halls of Congress; it was not as Governor nor as President that posterity will recognize him at his very greatest, and it was not in either of these capacities that he made his mightiest impress upon the American Republic. His master work was in giving his country its proper place in the family of the world. Extravagant eulogy would say he reconstructed the Republic; that he conjured a new nation into life; that he lifted the millions of his countrymen from darkness into light; that he bestowed the grandeur of imperial sunshine upon the humble inhabitants of a neglected land. The extravagant eulogy would not be wholly inaccurate in essence, nor necessarily offensive in terms. And yet the more modest statement more nearly comprehends the essential truth. He did not recreate the Republic. Practically all the elements here at the end of his life were here at the beginning. He did not conjure up a new nation. The mighty people who followed his bidding in 1898 and so on to the end could never have been conjured from its elements by any force less potential than Omnipotence! And yet the true American can get a better conception of the dignity of his citizenship; a better estimate of the majesty of national life, a prouder view of world-wide actions upon the theater of the world if he will but patiently and justly consider the steps in the transition which certainly has occurred, and trace the credit through each crisis to the influence most potent in producing that result. It is believed the work and influence of William McKinley was that most potent force; that, more than any other one man he has led his people from the halls of an heritage of which they were justly proud up to the threshold of an estate immeasurably more magnificent.