common ideal. They are broadened, stimulated, and inspired to a keener,
clearer vision on a wider outlook. The most significant, vital, and
inspiring phases of these conferences, those which really count for
most, and are the strongest guaranties of the permanence and power of
this movement, must, however, remain intangible. This fact was manifest
in every moment of that first Conference last January.

The fading of sectional prejudice in the glow of sympathetic
understanding was clearly evident. Some of the Western Governors in
their speeches said that their people of the West had felt that they
were isolated, misrepresented, misunderstood, and misjudged; but now
these Governors could go back to their States and their people with
messages of good will and tell them of the identity of interest, the
communion of purpose, the kinship of common citizenship, and the closer
knowledge that bound them more firmly to the East, to the South, and to
the North. Other Governors spoke of the facilitating of official
business between the States because of these meetings. They would no
longer, in correspondence, write to a State Executive as a mere name
without personality, but their letters would carry with them the
memories of close contact and cordial association with those whom they
had learned to know. There was no faintest tinge of State jealousies or
rivalry. The Governors talked frankly, freely, earnestly of their
States and for them, but it was ever with the honest pride of
trusteeship, never the petty vanity of proprietorship.

Patriotism seemed to throw down the walls of political party and
partizanship and in the three days' session the words Republican or
Democrat were never once spoken. The Governors showed themselves an
able body of men keenly alive to the importance of their work and with
a firm grasp on the essential issues. The meeting added a new dignity