The old library was first and foremost a collection of material for scholars; the new is for the busy citizen, to help him in what he is busy about, to make it possible for him to do more work in less time. It has taken some time for the library to see itself in this light, but it has taken the great body of our citizens still longer to recognize and act on the change--else I should not be talking to you to-day about the library and the business man. The modern library is concerned, much more largely than the old, with contemporary relations, with what is happening and what is just going to happen. It sympathizes with the men who do things. It tries to let them know what is going on about them, and to assist them in what they are attempting--whether it be to achieve a world-wide peace or to devise a new non-refillable bottle. The library has placed itself in a position where it can do this better than any other institution, for it is essentially non-partisan. Probably it is our only non-partisan institution. Mr. Bryan’s impartial government newspaper has not yet printed its first number. The school must take sides, for its deals solely with children. The library alone can store up material on all sides of every mooted question and offer it to him who reads, without in any way taking sides itself. It may run the risk of misconception. We had a big exhibit of war pictures last year. The Pacifists protested. It was very dreadful, they said, to see a library encouraging the militaristic spirit. This year we have a peace exhibit--prepared by the Union Against Militarism. The Preparedness people are horrified. They hate to see a library siding with those who would drag our country in the dust of humiliation. The trouble with all these good people is just hysteresis--lag. It may have been fifty years ago that a portrait of a monarch in a library meant that the institution was for him, body and soul. Now it means simply that he is an interesting contemporary thing. Display of a cartoon representing Woodrow Wilson doing something disgraceful does not imply on our part detestation of the president, but only a willingness to let the public see a good bit of drawing or perhaps to show them how some part of the community is thinking and feeling. It is all a part of our efforts at up-to-dateness--our struggles to brush off the dust and sweep away the cobwebs of medievalism.