I am sure that this beautiful building must produce a lively sense of grateful appreciation in all who care for the growth of friendship among Americans; to Mr. Carnegie, not merely for his generous gift but for the large sympathy and far vision that prompted it; and to the associate architects, Mr. Albert Kelsey and Mr. Paul Cret, who, not content with making this structure express their sense of artistic form and proportion, have entered with the devotion and self-absorption of true art into the spirit of the design for which their bricks and marble are to stand. They have brought into happy companionship architectural suggestions of the North and of the South; and have wrought into construction and ornament in a hundred ways the art, the symbolism, the traditions, and the history of all the American republics; and they have made the building a true expression of Pan Americanism, of open mind and open heart for all that is true and noble and worthy of respect from whatever race or religion or language or custom in the western continents. Nor should we forget the fine enthusiasm and understanding with which Mr. Borglum and Mr. Conti and Mrs. Farnham and Mrs. Whitney have brought sculpture to aid the architects' expression; nor the honest and faithful work of Mr. Norcross, the builder; nor the kind help of Mr. William Smith, of the Botanical Garden, who has filled the patio with tropical plants rare and strange to northern eyes, but familiar friends to the Latin American; nor the energy and unwearying labors of Mr. Barrett, the director of the bureau. The active interest of President Taft and Secretary Knox is evidence that the policy of Pan American friendship, re-inaugurated by the sympathetic genius of Secretary Blaine, is continuous and permanent in the United States; and the harmony in which the members of the governing board have worked to this end is a good omen for the future. This building is to be, in its most manifest utilitarian service, a convenient instrument for association and growth of mutual knowledge among the people of the different republics. The library maintained here, the books and journals accessible here, the useful and interesting publications of the bureau, the enormous correspondence carried on with seekers for knowledge about American countries, the opportunities now afforded for further growth in all these activities, justify the pains and the expense. The building is more important, however, as the symbol, the ever-present reminder, the perpetual assertion, of unity, of common interest and purpose and hope among all the republics. This building is a confession of faith, a covenant of fraternal duty, a declaration of allegiance to an ideal. The members of The Hague conference of 1907 described the conference in the preamble of its great arbitration convention as: Animated by the sincere desire to work for the maintenance of general peace.