International Agricultural Institute. 



45 



awakened and other Governments will be spontaneously 

 impelled to re-organise their own system. 



This is not a dream, or an attractive picture, imagined for 

 the occasion. Facts prove the truth and accuracy of the 

 statement. Indeed, although the Convention is so recent as 

 1905, and the Institute itself is but a few months old, its 

 influence and moral authority can be traced in more than one 

 case. 



Certain Governments, including some of the most import- 

 ant, in order to be able to reply to the requests of the 

 Institute, have, for instance, been led either to organise a 

 Department of Agricultural Statistics or to improve the one 

 already in existence, and to make provision for economic and 

 social institutions which were either non-existent or scarcely 

 developed. 



Limited in its action by the absence, or the lack, of or- 

 ganisation in this respect in certain countries, the Institute 

 will nevertheless induce those countries to improve their 

 organisation by the publication of the advantages obtained in 

 the more advanced States. Consequently, if the Govern- 

 ments support each other actively, as they have undertaken to 

 do, the Institute will gradually attain the ideal of supplying 

 for the whole world the information which the more advanced 

 States supply for their own territory. 



The practical results which public opinion expects will 

 naturally follow the progress and improvement of those ser- 

 vices : accurate crop reports, estimates issued without delay, 

 regular and stablq prices in the markets of the world, 

 improvement in the economic and social conditions of the 

 rural population — all these results will be obtained the more 

 easily and the more quickly, as Governments become con- 

 vinced that their own interests are intimately connected with 

 the future of the Institute. The progress of the one will be 

 in relation to the progress of the other. 



Even so limited and regulated, the task of the Institute will 

 still be immense, and the means at its disposal will always 

 be insufficient for its requirements. 



The Institute itself must therefore learn discipline; limiting 

 its own aspirations, avoiding grand conceptions, restraining 



