But up to the present time it is the glory of the public library that it knows neither North nor South, Catholic nor Protestant, Democrat, Republican nor Socialist. It shelves and circulates books on both sides of every possible scientific, economic, religious and sectional controversy, and no one has raised a hand to make it do otherwise. We should be proud of this and very jealous of it. As we have seen, there is some reason to think that newly awakened interest in the public library as a public utility has led to increased effort to gain its aid for purely personal and commercial ends. Naturally these interests have moved first. It is comparatively easy to steer clear of them and to defeat them. But attempts to interfere with the strict neutrality of the public library and to turn it into partisanship in any direction, if they ever come, should at the earliest betrayal of their purpose be sternly repressed and at the same time be given wide publicity, that we may all be on our guard. We may legitimately and properly adopt a once famous and much ridiculed slogan as our own, in this regard, and write over the doors of our public libraries “All that we ask is, let us alone!” SERVICE SYSTEMS IN LIBRARIES I should be understood better, perhaps, if I said “Civil service in the library”; but the civil service is so called merely in distinction to the military service, and there can be no military service in the library, although the uniform of certain janitors and messengers may appear, at first sight, to give me the lie. Every library, of course, must have some plan of service, more or less systematic. This may or may not be subject to the regulations of the state or city civil service. I have no desire to dwell here on the question of the desirability of such connection; but I cannot refrain from saying, at the risk of losing all of my civil service-reform friends, that I regard the present methods of bringing about appointment for merit only as makeshifts, well designed to defeat the efforts of politicians and others who wish to see appointments made for other reasons, but necessary only so long as those efforts are likely to continue. I shall doubtless be told that they are likely to continue indefinitely, and therefore that I have given away my whole case. To show that this is not so, we have only to point to a large number of libraries in connection with which there is no such effort, and in which safeguards against it are absolutely unnecessary. I do not know why politics has not invaded these institutions, but I know that it has not. During the past sixteen years I have been connected with four large libraries, and I am in a position to say not only that no political appointment was made in them during my connection, but that no such appointment was ever attempted or suggested. There is absolutely no reason why the protection of “civil-service” regulation should be thrown over these libraries, and every reason why they should