it a drift if you like; but the Library has not been simply drifting.  The swimmer in a rapid stream may give up all effort and submit to be borne along by the current, or he may try to get somewhere.  In so doing, he may battle with the current and achieve nothing but fatigue, or he may use the force of the stream, as far as he may, to reach his own goal.  I like to think that this is what many American institutions are doing, our libraries among them.  They are using the present tendency to eclecticism in an effort toward wider public service.  When, in a community, there seems to be a need for doing some particular thing, the library, if it has the equipment and the means, is doing that thing without inquiring too closely whether there is logical justification for linking it with the library’s activities rather than with some others.  Note, now, how this desirable result is aided by our prevailing American tendency toward eclecticism.  Suppose precisely the same conditions to obtain in England, or France, or Italy, the admitted need for some activity, the ability of the library and the inability of any other institution, to undertake it.  I submit that the library would be extremely unlikely to move in the matter, simply from the lack of the tendency that we are discussing.  That tendency gives a flexibility, almost a fluidity, which under a pressure of this kind, yields and ensures an outlet for desirable energy along a line of least resistance.

The Englishman and the American, when they are arguing a case of this kind, assume each the condition of affairs that obtains in his own land—­the rigidity on the one hand, the fluidity on the other.  They assume it without stating it or even thoroughly understanding it, and the result is that neither can understand the conclusions of the other.  The fact is that they are both right.  I seriously question whether it would be right or proper for a library in a British community to do many of the things that libraries are doing in American communities.  I may go further and say that the rigidity of British social life would make it impossible for the library to achieve these things.  But it is also true that the fluidity of American social life makes it equally impossible for the library to withstand the pressure that is brought to bear on it here.  To yield is in its case right and proper and a failure of response would be wrong and improper.

It is usually assumed by the British critic of American libraries that their peculiarities are due to the temperament of the American librarian.  We make a similar assumption when we discuss British libraries.  I do not deny that the librarians on both sides have had something to do with it, but the determining factor has been the social and temperamental differences between the two peoples.  Americans are fluid, experimental, eclectic, and this finds expression in the character of their institutions and in the way these are administered and used.