encouragement to the establishment of a new communal organization and to the development of corporate activities and social institutions in harmony with modern social ideas. The State cannot create a new social spirit; it can but provide opportunities for its growth and expression. One of the chief of these opportunities is the village institute, and we can think of no more profound or far-reaching piece of rural reconstruction than the provision of buildings expressly designed as a focus of the social activities of village communities. Whether such institutes become active centres of social and educational work will depend largely upon the degree in which voluntary organizations of various kinds co-operate in utilizing the opportunities which the institutes present. It is clear that a village institute can never become the mainspring of organized life in the village unless the organized activities of the village centre in the institute. The success of village institutes in the future rests upon an appeal to groups of people with common interests, rather than to individuals. It is because they have, in recent years, begun to flourish that we look forward hopefully to a vigorous life within the village institutes.” Only let the library hold the central position in these rural institutes that it held in the Mechanics’ Institutes before the Public Libraries Acts, and let the numerous libraries--and institutes--be knitted together in active fraternal union, and the Committee’s dreams may easily be accomplished.[26] FOOTNOTES: [18] The Adult Education Committee may have been justified in laying the blame for this state of things on “the want of foresight of the original promoters of the movement, who assumed that the institutions would appeal only to the artisan classes of the large centres of population”; but they were hardly right in going on to ascribe it more particularly to their mistake in allowing the legislature “to restrict the expenditure of public money to the product of a penny rate.” [19] _A Report on Library Provision and Policy_, by Professor W. G. S. Adams (1915), p. 15. [20] “Prior to 1920, pioneer rural schemes had been financed or assisted by the Trust in the counties or areas noted in column ‘A’ below; column ‘B’ shows the counties to which grants have been sanctioned this year; column ‘C’ shows the counties whose Authorities are in negotiation (preliminary or advanced) with a view to a grant.” A Perthshire Caithness Montrose District Nottinghamshire Staffordshire Wiltshire Gloucestershire Buckinghamshire Dorsetshire Somersetshire Yorkshire Village Library Cardigan Carnarvon Brecon & Radnor Denbighshire Montgomeryshire Grantham District Westmorland Warwickshire B Sutherland Clackmannan Renfrewshire Forfar & Kincardine Midlothian Berwickshire Peeblesshire Dumbartonshire Kent Pembrokeshire Glamorganshire West Sussex Cheshire Inverness