Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Document I. Opening Address At The Formal Inauguration Of The American Congress Of Bibliography And History At Buenos Aires. This meeting was opened by the Argentine Minister of the Interior. The address was delivered by Dr. Chapman in Spanish. It will be published in Spanish in the volume which will record the acts and proceedings of the Congress. textit{Most Excellent Minister, Mr. President, Fellow-Delegates, textit{Ladies and Gentlemen: I desire, in the first place, in the name of California, whose University I represent on this occasion, to felicitate the Argentine Republic upon having completed, with such happy fortune, one hundred years since the Declaration of her Independence. Well may you felicitate yourselves, for the history of the world does not record a more stupendous advance than that which Argentina has made since those memorable years when, under Liniers, she repulsed the attacks of a foreign power which was trying to take possession of her. Then, for the first time, Argentina was revealed to herself, and it was a matter of a few years for a Belgrano, a San Martin, and other illustrious generals, to assure the independence of the country. It is difficult for me, a historian by profession, to leap from that moment to the present, without reminding you of the great men, well known though they be, who contributed, by their fervent patriotism and warlike valor, to the growth of this powerful Republic, whose greatest blasonry finds itself represented in this magnificent city of today. Argentina’s mighty forward advance along the highway of progress is indisputably the determining cause why this Republic, which, a hundred years ago, possessed little more than the potential wealth of its soil and the valor of its men, may today preside over an textit{intellectual Congress, whose re…