The PRESIDENT then said:  No further observations having been made on the protocols, they will now be signed by the Secretaries and the President.

Mr. DE STRUVE, Delegate of Russia.  Before the Conference terminates, I beg to express, in the name of my colleagues, our sincere gratitude for the hospitality extended to the Conference by the Government of the United States, and I beg to express our heartiest thanks to you, Mr. President, for the able and impartial manner in which you have presided over our deliberations.  When we elected you, we unanimously elected the first Delegate of the United States.  If we had to begin again, the personal feelings of all the delegates would supply powerful additional reasons for making the election equally unanimous.

Mr. DE STRUVE’S observation met with the unanimous approval of the Delegates.

The PRESIDENT.  Gentlemen, I am greatly honored by the kind expression of your good feeling towards me as the President of this Conference, and I thank you very heartily for it.  The duty assigned to us all has not been free from difficulty, but our meetings and discussions have been characterized by great courtesy and kindness, and by a conciliatory spirit.

With patience and devotion the Delegates to this Congress have sought to discharge the trust committed to them, and, as your Chairman, I beg you to receive my most cordial thanks for the courteous consideration I have received at your hands.  The President of the United States and the Secretary of State desire me to renew to you their thanks for your presence here, and their best wishes for your safe and happy return each to his own home.

I shall esteem myself very happy hereafter whenever I shall have the good fortune to meet any of my colleagues of the International Meridian Conference.

Mr. RUTHERFURD, the Delegate of the United States.  Mr. President and gentlemen, I am sure that you will all unite with me in passing the resolution which I now propose to read: 

     “Resolved, That the thanks of the Conference be presented
     to the Secretaries for the able manner in which they have
     discharged their arduous duties.”

The resolution was unanimously adopted.

General STRACHEY, Delegate of Great Britain.  I wish, sir, as one of the Secretaries, to express my thanks for the manner in which my labors have been esteemed by the delegates present.  All that I can say on the subject is, that however troublesome the duties of the Secretaries have been, I have not the least doubt that anybody else named instead of myself would equally have bestowed his best attention on the discharge of those duties.