In this home education, which must hereafter be recognised side by side with school education, the library is the great central agent round which study clubs, reading circles, extension teaching, museums, and the other allied agencies must cluster. A statesman solicitous for the future welfare of his country will find his most fruitful field in protecting and guiding the reading of the people. It is what a man reads that shapes his future, which depends, not at once upon the rostrum and the pulpit, but on the book and the newspaper. In education we recognise that the supreme end is the building of character, but many of us have never thought clearly how directly this character-building rests upon the public library. It is reading that begets reflection, reflection begets motive, motive begets action, and action begets habit, and habit begets character; and who here dares question this, that it is not the air nor the water, nor yet the "roast beef of Old England," not its history nor traditions nor laws nor geographic location, but _character_, that has made the Anglo-Saxons, England and her daughters across the seas, the most wonderful people of the earth. It is not brawn, but brain. The dogs and horses might have the physical qualities, but it is the mind and soul, and those elements of true greatness which can best be instilled into a people through the reading of good and great books, that have made a race of which we are justly all so proud. One of the wisest of Frenchmen said of the Franco-Prussian War, when the needle-gun was suggested as the explanation of German victory, "No; it was not the needle-gun, nor the German soldier who held it, nor yet the German schoolmaster who trained the soldier, but it was the German university that made the schoolmaster." "Knowledge is power," and it is knowledge that has made England and America great. Think of the men who read the poorest newspapers, but know nothing of our best books. Can the State afford to make other things free, and not make free true and useful knowledge as preserved in books? Can the State recognize the necessity for free schools, and fail to provide free access to the best reading in all realms of knowledge?