The observance of the Lewis and Clark Centennial, therefore, is an occasion in which the American people as a whole and through their government have the largest reasons for generous participation. For great was the Oregon opportunity to the nation and the Lewis and Clark expedition was the key that opened it. All honor from the nation at large is due to those who made this national opportunity and seized it. The possession of the Pacific coast was the corollary and sequel to the Oregon movement; but the Oregon movement itself was corollary to nothing less than the spirit and vigor of the American people and their foothold upon this continent. We have, then, a national occasion second only to that of Philadelphia in 1876; and the first great mission of the centennial will be realized when its occasion has been so interpreted and enforced that a hearty and liberal participation in the celebration on the part of the nation has been secured so that our American national consciousness may fully realize what has been "the course of empire" with us as a nation and what it is almost certain to be in the future. The accomplishment of the other mission of the exposition requires a true interpretation of the problem of largest progress for the Pacific Northwest. Expositions worthy of the name can not be "hit or miss" affairs. They are not mere congeries of remarkable products. An exposition should have an organic unity and a distinct aim. Its aim must bear directly on the highest interests of the supporting community. There are peculiar reasons for the exercise of the highest degree of care and insight in the organization of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. No people ever before invested so heavily in proportion to their means as Portland and Oregon propose to invest in the Lewis and Clark Centennial. No exposition was ever held in a community so plastic, so completely in the making as are Portland and Oregon. The current of common thought and effort is so strongly set toward the Lewis and Clark Centennial that the very cast of Oregon's civilization in the future will surely come from what is realized in that event. The exposition will leave an inspired, unified, and enlightened people, with ideals newly defined and elevated; or it will be followed by more or less of humiliation, factional strife, disgrace, blighting discouragement, with sordid ideals and disordered social relations. Most auspicious was Oregon's response to the idea of a celebration. Stronger faith in the good that may come from unity in action toward higher things no other people has ever shown; and why should not Oregon have faith in greater things for herself and the Pacific Northwest? The Pacific Northwest bears almost exactly the same relation to the rest of the nation east of us geographically, historically, and economically that Greece bore to the Orient, and that England bore to the continental nations of Europe.