But I fear you will hardly be satisfied with the analogy. The British Museum, you will say, is placed in a city which is not merely the capital of the British Empire, but the metropolis; the literary metropolis also of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Library of Congress is at the capital of the United States. But this capital is not itself a metropolis. No student in Great Britain has to travel over 500 miles to reach the British Museum. A student in the United States may have to travel as much as 3000 miles to reach the Library of Congress. The area which supports the national library of Great Britain is but 100,000 square miles; that which supports the National Library of the United States is ever 3,000,000 square miles. The conditions differ, and therefore, you will say, the obligation. If there is any way in which our National Library may "reach out" from Washington it should reach out. Its first duty is no doubt as a legislative library--to Congress. Its next is as a federal library to aid the executive and judicial departments of the government and the scientific undertakings under governmental auspices. Its next is to that general research which may be carried on at Washington by resident and visiting students and scholars: which in American history, political and social science, public administration, jurisprudence and international law is likely to make Washington its center, and which, under the auspices of the Washington Memorial Institution--that new project for post graduate study involving the use of the scientific collections and scientific experts at Washington--is likely to be organized in various branches of the natural and physical sciences as well. But this should not be the limit. There should be possible also a service to the country at large: a service to be extended through the libraries which are the local centers of research involving the use of books. That claim may be made. Now what at Washington might be useful to these libraries? (A lively imagination is not requisite.) Suppose there could be a collection of books universal in scope, as no local library with limited funds and limited space can hope to be: a collection that shall contain also particularly (1) original sources, (2) works of high importance for occasional reference, but whose cost to procure and maintain precludes their acquisition by a local library pressed to secure the material of ordinary and constant need, and (3) the "useless" books; books not costly to acquire, but of so little general concern as not to justify cataloging, space and care in each local library if only they are known to be preserved and accessible somewhere.