If the scholarly work of our time was to be represented at St. Louis, something had to be attempted which should be not simply an imitation of the branch-congresses which every scientific specialty in every country is calling every year. Scholarship was to be asked to show itself really in process, and to produce for the World's Fair meeting something which without it would remain undone. To invite the scholars of the world for their leisurely enjoyment and reposeful discussion of work done elsewhere is one thing; to call them together for work which they would not do otherwise, and which ought to be done, is a very different thing. The first had in St. Louis all odds against it; it seemed worth while to try the second. And it seemed not only worth while in the interest of scholarship, it seemed, above all, the only way to give to the scholarship of our time a chance for the complete demonstration of its productive energies. The plan of unrelated congresses, with chance combinations of papers prepared at random, was therefore definitively replaced by the plan of only one representative gathering, bound together by one underlying thought, given thus the unity of one scholarly aim, whose fulfillment is demanded by the scientific needs of our time, and is hardly to be reached by other methods. Every arbitrary and individual choice was then to be eliminated and every effort was to be controlled by the one central purpose; the work thus to be organized and prepared with the same carefulness of adjustment and elaboration which was doubtless to be applied in the admirable exhibitions of the United States Government or in the art exhibition. The open question was, of course, what topic could fulfill these various demands most completely; wherein lay the greatest scholarly need of our time; what task could be least realized by the casual efforts of scholarship at random; where was the unity of a world organization most needed?