The war was a war waged by scientists and through the sciences. The principles of the sciences were its principles. The methods of the sciences were its methods. The conditions attending research and applications of the results of research were its conditions. The two chief new forms of attack, the submarine and the airplane, had their origin in the science of physics, and the use of these machines was determined by the laws of physics. Every gun of a battery was loaded with compounds made according to the laws of chemistry, and it was aimed and discharged in accordance with the laws of trigonometry. The making of every trench and the explosion of every mine was settled by the laws of geology and of other sciences. The manufacture of every gas followed the principles of chemical action and reaction, and the methods of protection against the perils of gas were determined by chemical and physical investigations. Even the healing of the wounds on the arm, back, and chest was measured, and a prognosis made, to a certain degree by the laws of mathematics. Such a fundamental use of scientific principles belonged quite as much to Germany as to the United States and the Allies. In fact, in certain relations, as in the use of gas, Germany anticipated her enemies. She mobilized her professors of chemistry and of physics in her military service much earlier than did the Allies, as she mobilized her troops ahead of her foes. But the scientists of Great Britain, France, and the United States were, when the summons came, no less prompt, no less efficient, and no less enthusiastic, than the professors of Berlin and Leipsic. For the very first time, the chemists, the physicists, the mathematicians, the geologists were given an opportunity of devoting all their technical skill and scientific resources to the service of their nation and humanity. They sprang as one strong man to meet the demand and to embrace the opportunity.

The scientists who thus threw their personalities, their services and their laboratories into the war, were usually teachers in American colleges and universities. Members of the research staff in industrial plants were no less eager in their offers, no less patriotic in their self-sacrificing contributions, and their number was large. But directly as well as indirectly the college teachers formed the great bulk of the scientific army, who in permanent laboratories or extemporized plants worked for their government.

In the work of the scientists were found two fundamental and comprehensive elements: --first, the element of the formation of groups of scholars for research, and, second, the coöperation of these groups. Perhaps the most important of all the research groups was that which was composed of scholars like Merritt of Cornell, Mason of Wisconsin, Wilson of Rice Institute, Pierce and Bridgman of Harvard, Bumstead, Nichols and Zeleny of Yale, and Michelson of Chicago.(23) These outstanding professors were asked to find devices for avoiding many dangers, of which the submarine peril was the most serious. This service,--- the cost of which amounted to more than one million dollars --- had so proved its value that after a few months it was taken over by the Navy Department.

This group and similar groups associated themselves with other bodies engaged also in scientific exploration and discovery. The Science and Research Division and the Signal Corps, the Bureau of Aircraft Production, the Meteorological Section of the Science and Research Division, are names which, important in themselves, represent the coöperation of highly trained specialists, formed largely of college men, who worked together unto great results. Such groups and such coöperation were not, by any manner of means, confined to the United States. The French, English, and Italian scientists were in constant coöperation, both in person, by post and by cable, over devices which proved to be of the highest worth.

Of all the sciences, however, chemistry was in this war the first well equipped scientific force in the field. It was an epoch-making day in the history of the war and in the history of applied chemistry, when the Chemical Service Section was formed as a unit of the National Army. The foundation was laid in Washington, soon after the formal entrance of the United States, at a conference of members of the General Staff, Medical Corps and War College, with Navy and civilian chemists. Its chief was Lieutenant Colonel W. H. Walker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It chose for its colors, the colors of the American Chemical Society,--- cobalt blue and gold, and it adopted for its insignia the traditional alembic of alchemy joined with the benzene ring.

Thus organized the chemists served in many relations. They became members of the General Staff and were in charge of all forms of the gas warfare, which included research, manufacturing and testing.

They were made members of the Ordnance Department. In this relationship they were concerned with the solving of problems touching explosives from the moment of the beginning of making to the moment of testing and of discharge. This service was rendered at many points from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi. coöperation was had with laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of the University of Michigan and of other institutions. The chemists also had a share in the work of the office of the surgeon general. Questions of food, of nutrition and of sanitation were committed to them. At the Harriman Laboratory, the spoiling of meat was a special problem considered. At the University of Rochester, the effect of temperature on desiccated vegetables was made a particular question.

These services were rendered to the Army on the land. The service rendered through chemists to the Navy were also as significant, even if the number engaged was smaller. In the Ordnance Bureau of the Navy about one hundred chemists were enrolled. In the War Trade Board, the Shipping Board, the Food Administration Board, the Tariff Commission, were also found chemists giving the unique service which each department demanded.

In hundreds of chemical laboratories on the campus of as many colleges, professors were enrolled under government direction, pursuing researches which might add to the power of the government as a fighting machine. These researches covered in an incidental way many of the problems which were comprehensively examined in the formal laboratories of the government. While professors were pursuing their work in a more or less regular way as members of the teaching staff, they were also practically enrolled as soldiers of the National Army.

It is ever to be remembered that the thousands of men engaged formally and informally in the chemical branch of the war, were originally trained in the colleges and that many of them were permanent members of faculties. They represented no small share of the contribution made to the war by the higher education.

A similar interpretation belongs to the yet broader field of physics. In this field physicists, teachers in American colleges, bore an equally important part. In the multitude of instances one selects representative examples. One conspicuous example is found in the airplane. An American scholar and teacher has personally said:

"At the outbreak of the war the airplane was a toy operated by an engine which was none too reliable and which could develop only 80 horse-power; to-day we have an airplane which is a piece of engineering driven by one or more engines each capable of developing 400 horse-power; and this modern wonder is capable of carrying 50 passengers while another now building will carry 100. During the war the airplanes flew from London to Constantinople and back, on bombing raids, making non-stop flights of over 1,000 miles; during the year 1918, 16,000 Liberty engines were produced: a special cotton fabric and a thin sheet steel were developed to take the place of the linen formerly used on the wings; speeds up to 140 miles per hour have been recorded and the unheard of height of 29,000 feet reached which latter achievement, by the way, opens up new possibilities in the study of meteorology. The monthly fatality average has been one fatality for each 3,200 hours flown.

"Much progress has been made with the dirigible type of airship thanks to the discovery of a cheap non-inflammable gas as a substitute for the dangerous hydrogen. This gas, helium, first discovered on the sun, was produced before the war at a cost of $1,500-$1,600 per cubic foot; it is now found in such large quantities in the natural gas of some of the southwestern states that the cost of production per cubic foot is about $100; if this supply continues to hold out there is a great future for the airship.

"It goes without saying that the theory of aviation has been placed upon a much better foundation because of the thousands of experiments it has been possible to make; efforts at stabilizing are meeting with success and considerable improvement in the various instruments used has been made."

Another American physicist, Professor Joseph S. Ames of Johns Hopkins University, writing before the signing of the armistice, of two great additions to the weapons of attack said:

"There are two main problems in connection with the submarine, first, to locate it, second to destroy it. Methods of destruction are at hand in the shape of depth bombs; but methods of detection so far have not been eminently successful. From an airplane one can see through the water only to a limited depth, never more than twenty feet, and so the main reason why the sea-planes have been so successful in destroying submarines is not due to the fact that the observer in the airplane discovers his prey, but is that his machine has such great speed, three times that of a destroyer, that when news is flashed that a vessel is being attacked by a submarine it can often reach the spot in time to drop its bomb effectively. The detection of the presence of a submarine is a definite physical problem; and it is not an exaggeration to say that at least one-fourth of the physicists of note in England, France and this country have been engaged in the attempt to solve it. What lines of attack upon it are open? Not many. The submarine in motion emits certain sounds; can they be heard? It is a solid body; can one obtain an echo from it? It is made of iron; can this fact help through some magnetic action? These are the obvious lines of approach, but one should not hastily conclude that there are not others. Without stating, and I may not, how far successful these efforts of the physicists have been, I may note that the method which is now being tested by our Navy is one elaborated by a distinguished professor of mathematical physics."(24)

There were, moreover, certain special adaptations or applications of physics which proved to be of great worth. The whole art of surveying was changed by the war. An operator with a camera in an airplane can, it was proved, in less than a minute make a complete map of a section of country, even at as great a height as four miles. In meteorology, it was proved that balloons can be made to have a speed of even a hundred miles an hour and fly a distance of more than a thousand miles. The Research Division of the Meteorologists proved that the upper regions of the air can be measured and mapped out,--- facts that are of the utmost value to the aviator.

Physicists, too, accomplished great results in the art of signalling. In this complex and unique art special use was made of the infra-red and the ultraviolet rays, which are invisible. Great improvements were also made in the wireless telegraph and the wireless telephone. The sound waves from the guns of the enemy were used to locate their position, within one per cent. of the true place. Physicists were also concerned with the development of armor plate, with the art of camouflage, with improvements in photography, and with the discovery and application of the German methods for the production of dye stuffs, and in the making of optical glass.

The physicists who thus contributed to the winning of the war were usually members of the teaching staffs of American colleges, and, like the chemists, they represented the personal contribution which the cause of higher learning offered.

Less superficially evident, but no less fundamentally useful, than the services of the mathematician, of the chemist and of the physicist was the service of the geologist and the geographer. Their work comprised several groups of activities. Such activities were of course given by British and French scholars as well as by American. They were advisers of the Military Staff of the British armies in Palestine, at Gallipoli and in Greece. The German army early in the war installed geologists in the army organization. Geologists served as consultants on the topographic conditions touching strategy. They were made explorers for water. To find this supply became as hard and as important a problem in densely peopled Flanders as it was in Palestine and Syria. They offered counsel regarding proper conditions for excavations and mining operations, kept close watch of underground waters (always liable to rise or fall), a constant problem, not only in wet weather but also in drouth. It has been said that it was the skill of the geologists who planned the location of fifty or more mines placed in the Messines Ridge, which resulted in their successful explosion. They were consultants for supplies of material for roads, regarding foundations for positions for the artillery and regarding proper conditions of camp sanitation.

The United States Geological Survey in coöperation with the War Industries Board, Bureau of Mines, Shipping Board, Bureau of Standards and other organizations gave invaluable aid in promoting research and advancing various activities, both large and of detail. The finding of manganese ore, the importation of which had ceased, and of sulphuric supplies, high grade clay for special purposes, chromite, potassium, pyrite for making sulphuric acid, represented this important and diverse service.

Geologists and geographers were also employed in many training camps in making and reading maps, and in teaching students in these arts. In the literary field reports on the topography and geology of each cantonment were made, not only for immediate information, but also for the purpose of training officers to secure similar knowledge for the future location of camps. The literary service of the geographers, physiographers and cartographers was of such great value that at least a quartet of them were made members of the Paris Peace Council.(25)

As in the case of other scientists, the credit for the contribution offered by geologists was ultimately due to the colleges. The colleges trained these men for their great service and in the colleges not a few of them were permanent teachers.

Of all the offerings made by the American universities to the great cause, the contributions of the medical schools were, if not more useful, at least more impressive.

The service, of course, had its foundation in the professional training given for decades previous to 1917, as well as in the training of the years covering the war itself. The service rendered was supported by the great improvement of the medical schools in the decade preceding the outbreak of the war. This improvement was greater than had occurred in the preceding half century. Regarding the medical service of the war and in the education lying behind this service, a competent interpreter has written: ---

"The most important factor in the efficiency of a medical school is the maintenance of an efficient personnel in the teaching staff. Hence, in addition to oversight of distribution of medical practitioners to care for the health of the civilian population, and the securing of medical officers to care for the sick and wounded of the army, the surgeon general must maintain effective teaching staffs in all those medical schools which were serving as training schools for the future medical officers.

"However it was necessary to secure the service in the army of every competent and physically fit medical man who could be spared from the care of the civilian population and from the training of students. The army had need of highly trained experts in many fields of medicine, especially in hospital and camp laboratories and in certain of the medical and surgical specialties. It was well known before the war, and was more apparent after the war began, that on the whole the best men in their various lines were on the teaching staffs of some medical school. This was true because the medical school in each community seeks the best men of that community and also because medical men who are teaching are stimulated to greater effort to become more expert, both by study and by investigation, than are the men in practice who are deprived of the stimulus of being associated with students and a teaching institution.

"It soon became apparent that if the army were permitted to take all the experts it desired, then the schools would be stripped of a large part of their best teachers, and as a result the members of the Medical Enlisted Reserve Corps who were left in the schools for the sole purpose of being adequately trained for future service in the army would get an inefficient training because of the lack of experienced good teachers.

"Hence the War Department diminished its early efforts to bring into the army men who were teachers in medical schools. This did not solve the problem, for it was soon apparent that the best teachers were extremely patriotic and desired to serve their country and further, that they believed they should go into the army rather than remain as teachers in the medical schools. The psychology of the situation was evident, especially when emphasized by the public attitude toward able-bodied men who were not in uniform. Some plan was needed whereby the teaching staffs of the medical schools should not be impaired to such extent that there would be a resulting deterioration in the training of the students."(26)

As a result the government allowed each medical school to retain the teachers who were essential to the carrying on of the school. Such men were regarded as serving their nation quite as effectively as if they had gone to a hospital in France. The contribution of the medical schools, through their graduates, teachers, and students, made to the winning of the war, represented no less than 30,000, physicians and surgeons. Of this great number, about one half graduated within the decade preceding their entrance, about 10,000 between the years 1899-1908, and 5,000 before the year 1899. Essentially they were all young men. The contribution which the medical schools thus made was of course of the utmost worth. In numbers the thirty thousand enrollments represented slightly more than one-fifth of all the practicing physicians.(27)

In the development of the American medical service no less than six university base hospital units were established in France. In fact, as early as December 28th, 1914, a body of surgeons, nurses, and anesthetists from Western Reserve University and its allied Lakeside Hospital sailed for France to serve with the Allied forces, and, after the declaration of war in 1917, it was a similar body which was ordered into similar service. Later, King George, at Buckingham Palace, addressing this unit, said, "We greet you as the first detachment of the American Army which has landed on our shores since your great Republic resolved to join in the world struggle for the ideals of civilization. We deeply appreciate this prompt and generous response to our needs. It is characteristic of the humanity and chivalry which has ever been evinced by the American nation that the first assistance rendered to the Allies is in connection with the profession of healing and the work of mercy."

The officers of these various university units gave most efficient service at the front, as well as behind the lines. A single one of these university hospital units cared for more than sixty-eight thousand sick and wounded men. Not only was such personal, direct care given, but also scientific research groups were formed among the surgeons and physicians and their associates. The causes and the prevention of the diverse diseases and sicknesses to which the soldiers were subjected received careful attention. Every wounded man became a specific problem. The comparative value of different methods of treatment was the object of constant inquiry. The study of shock and exhaustion occupied no small share of the attention of the research staff. The shielding of the ear against the effect of explosives, the defensive use of gasses, the sterilization of water in all the camps, the saving of soldiers from the constant peril of typhoid fever --- a peril which was specially virulent for the first men of the war --- are examples of the diverse service given by medical professors.

In every branch of the service, the element of industrial fatigue played an important part. The scarcity of labor of every sort made it of extreme importance that each laborer be permanently kept at his highest efficiency. The physiologist was therefore constantly called upon to quicken those who were underworking and to restrain those who were guilty of overwork.

"It would appear," says Doctor George W. Crile, to whom I am indebted for certain of these interpretations, "that the service of the medical departments of our universities during the great war would justify a permanent organization whereby the members of our university medical schools would become a permanent part of our national defense. Our eighty university schools thus organized would cover the hospital needs of an army of approximately 3,200,000. By means of such an organization it would be possible for the Surgeon General to establish his military point of view in the training of all worthy medical men. By such a collective effort an American medical force could be established ready for practical application in time of national need."

And yet the experiences of the medical schools in the war time gave ground for the interpretation that there are serious deficiencies in these schools, and consequently in their graduates. The war proved that the schools had not educated their students in what is known as physical diagnosis, and also the war proved that there is a great ignorance of hygiene and of the fundamental conditions of public health. It was also shown that no small share of the physicians, who claimed to be specialists, had not received adequate training. But, despite these facts, the contribution made was a necessary part of the great effort for winning the war.

The service of the medical schools was by no means confined to the traditional conditions of caring for the sick and the wounded and of the promotion of good hygienic forces in the battle area. The medical schools, directly or indirectly, provided men and equipment for important commissions to devastated lands. These commissions were concerned with Servia, Russia, with the Balkan Provinces, including Roumania, and with the countries of the near East. They bore offerings beneficent, as well as unique, offerings which in their origin were made by the schools of medicine and their affiliated hospitals. The needs which these commissions filled were of inexpressible value.

A member of the delegation, which went to Roumania in the year of 1917, Doctor Roger G. Perkins of Western Reserve University, has indicated the seriousness of the condition in Roumania. He says:

"Everything tangible in the way of supplies had been commandeered for military purposes, all physicians up to the age of sixty-five had been mobilized, and most of the assistants in the civil hospitals had been taken into war service. As a result of this one-sided arrangement, fairly active measures were being taken among the troops in the way of delousing, isolation of patients, and so forth, so that the actual incidence in the war zone was low. Among the civil population, however, there was practically nothing being done except in the larger centers, and these were so frightfully overcrowded that even the best of intentions were unable to accomplish much. The city of Jassy, for instance, with a normal population of sixty thousand, was housing nearly three hundred thousand, and other towns were crowded in similar proportion. There were insufficient food and insufficient clothing and insufficient hospital supplies and drugs, and when anything was at hand, the best of it went to the military. In the rural districts which were most removed from the fighting lines, things were comparatively normal, though the insufficiency of food and clothing was evident. Nearer the fighting lines, however, on account partly of the great difficulties of transportation, the conditions were very serious. In addition to the armies of defense, there was a large number of refugees from the occupied districts and also a number of persons evacuated from homes on the Allied side which were under German fire. For the care of these people, there was practically no provision whatever, and, although the season was still early and the weather warm enough to prevent the crowding together, which occurs always in the winter periods, cases of typhus were being noted sporadically all over the country. It was clear that, with the onset of colder weather and without active measures, there was a chance for a repetition of the previous epidemic in which 100,000, were said to have died."

To meet such conditions, the commission adopted the following methods:

"First, to make all military baths, hospitals, and disinfectors available for civil as well as military population; second, to detach from military service a sufficient number of physicians with previous experience in civil work to have a special care of the civil population of the country; third, that as far as the epidemic went, a man should be appointed with proper experience who should be in general control of the entire work and have accessibility to all supplies whether civil or military."

The methods adopted were proved, after more than a year of their application, to have been effective. For, despite difficulties and hindrances and constant appeals, it was made evident that thousands were saved from typhus infections and that the nation was spared a heavy toll of death.

Lamentable as was the condition of Roumania, the condition of Servia was still more pitiable. To Servia, near the close of the war, a commission was sent, composed of professors in medical schools who, through one of their number, made the following report:

"There never had been enough doctors in the country, a large number of these had been killed during the war, and in 1919 there were so few that many parts of the country had one physician to 75,000 or more persons. With the difficulties of transportation made much worse by the destruction of roads and bridges during the war, this meant that the greater part of Servia was totally without medical service of any sort.

"It was accordingly arranged to establish small groups of doctors and nurses, as far as possible in association with relief stations, and to have these units care for emergency medical work with the distinct understanding that they should give, as far as possible, primary education in public health matters. No elaborate program was possible on account of the lack of education and the impossibility of any intensive propaganda. On this basis, some twenty-five stations were established throughout Servia manned with American personnel. They were everywhere most heartily welcomed, and every facility which the war-ridden country could furnish them was put at their disposal. To have left the country and abandoned the work at the end of June, 1919, as was originally planned, would have been a serious error for the Red Cross and a misfortune for the people. After consulting with the Servian authorities and with the heads of the Balkan Commission and the Commission for Europe, the Red Cross decided to retain about half of these stations for a period of at least a year, under American personnel. This action was necessary because the Servians actually lacked physicians and obviously could not obtain more without leaving several years for their instruction, unless they had assistance from outside. In Roumania and Greece, on the other hand, the actual possible supply of medical men was adequate if properly distributed. The pathetic appreciation of our efforts in the medical line and the friendly feeling towards America in the villages to which our work was accessible, constituted probably the greatest potential influence for good of any of the relations between the Red Cross and the Balkan people."

In the service of science in prosecuting and winning the war, the function of agriculture was constant and vital. In this field the work done through the so-called "Land Grant Colleges" established by the Morrill Act of 1862 was of tremendous significance. This pregnant Act together with subsequent legislation of the National Congress had caused a vast development in agriculture throughout the West. Of the conditions the Secretary of Agriculture, David F. Houston, wrote:

"The Land-grant Colleges and experiment stations are without parallel. They are 67 in number, have a total valuation of endowment, plant, and equipment of $195,000,000; and income of more than $45,000,000, with 5,900 teachers; a resident student body of over 75,000, and a vast number receiving extension instruction. Their great ally, the Department of Agriculture, is unquestionably the greatest practical and scientific agricultural organization in the world. It has a staff of more than 20,000 people, many of them highly trained experts, and a budget of approximately $65,000,000."(28)

And further Dr. Houston said: -

"The department and its great allies, the Land-grant Colleges, immediately proceeded to redirect their activities and to put forth all their energies in the most promising directions. In a conference of the agricultural leaders of the nation in St. Louis, called just before the United States entered the war, a program for further organization, legislation and action with reference to production, conservation and marketing was drawn up, the principle features of which have been enacted into law without substantial change or have been put into effect. This prompt and effective handling of the situation was made possible by reason of the fact that the American people, generations before, had wisely laid the foundations of many agricultural institutions and had with increasing liberality supported their agricultural agencies."(29)

The scientific contributions therefore, made by Great Britain, France and the United States for the winning of the war were as broad, diverse, and fundamental as the cause of science itself. The professors in academic faculties became officers of the National Army. The equipment in chemistry, geology, physics and other sciences were, so far as necessary, transferred to the government. The coöperation of teachers of these sciences was marked. Their co-working in making airplanes and in methods of signalling was peculiarly significant. New laboratories were built and manned by college teachers. Researches in manifold fields were instituted. Science became, in a word, mobilized in the service of democracy and of humanity. The part that science played in former wars had been slight. The place that science may fill in future wars is unknown. It is probable that through biology and bacteriology a greater function will be performed, but the place of science in at least five of its great divisions in the great war is secure. Its contributions stand forth fostered and nourished by the college as of unique significance and imperishable value.

Florence Nightingale remains as the type of the war-time nurse. But a broader and more important form of women's service this war brought forth than the "Lady with the Lamp" could ever picture. The American college for women represented and embodied this service.

The number of colleges open to women of the three ordinary types, co-educational, co-ordinate, separate, is about five hundred. The co-educational and the co-ordinate colleges made first-rate contributions, but the colleges for women alone, by reason of their more individual organization, gave a service yet more distinctive. Throughout the far-flung crisis, the graduates, the officers and the students of these colleges rendered several types of service.

Be it at once said that the colleges for women, like the colleges for men, directly on the outbreak of the war, put themselves on a war basis. They respected food regulations, they observed meatless and wheatless days, they established economies of many sorts.

One college saved coal by having no heat during October of the year 1918. Students abolished their parties, like Junior "Proms.," Class Days and Class Plays. "No frills and frippery" was a motto adopted at Vassar.

The colleges themselves formally offered courses of instruction designed to educate and to train women for special war-time activities. Some provided courses in agriculture and horticulture. The attendance of women at the ordinary schools of agriculture increased. Several colleges offered courses in occupational therapy designed to train students to become teachers of wounded soldiers in various handicrafts. Applied psychology, chemistry, wireless telegraphy, map-making and map-reading, home economics, drafting, typewriting, French with emphasis on such conversation as might be necessary in canteens, the mechanism of the motor car, first aid, surgical dressings, home nursing, war cookery: all of these and many more courses represented the wartime instruction. Students felt themselves impelled toward such training; and the college officers with much enthusiasm, threw themselves into the giving of such instruction. The value of such courses was both psychological and practical.

The colleges also gave themselves to what may be called the military avocations of academic life. Chief among them were found the activities of the Red Cross. Most diverse were the services thus rendered by both younger and older graduates and by students. They all gave themselves to the executive work of the Red Cross. They became teachers in the Navy Department and censors in the post-office, publicity workers in the Women's Council of National Defense, and psychological examiners of candidates in the aviation service. They did welfare work in factories. They served at home and abroad as telephone operators and superintendents. Individual colleges offered individual services.

Reed College, Oregon, formed a military organization for knitting, which was divided into thirteen companies. Vassar's students provided more than 25,000 pieces of work done for soldiers. The "Sopho-Militia," at Randolph-Macon, helped to furnish a hostess house at Camp Lee. The agricultural unit of Vassar and of other colleges helped to overcome the shortage of farm labor in the spring of 1918. The Patriotic League of one college sent out six thousand pieces of mail addressed to soldiers. Financial campaigns, like Liberty Bonds and friendship funds, were carried forward; and in one college, the Western Reserve College for Women, the amount secured in one Liberty Loan through students was more than one-half million dollars. The faculty and students of Vassar College raised $182,000 for war service. Many nurses of hundreds of Young Women's Christian Associations in the colleges were mobilized for instant and constant service. The typical college came to have fun and sport in planning work for the comfort of the men at the front and in the camps. Such were some of the campus and near-campus activities of the students and graduates. In a still wider radius were found many other activities. These activities came to their fullness in the summer of the year 1918. No one of these services proved to be more commanding than that found in the Vassar Nurses' Camp in the so-called vacation months of that year. This camp was, in fact, a "Woman's Plattsburg." It gave an introductory training to women who proposed to adopt nursing as a profession. About one hundred and fifteen colleges were represented by graduates or students, coming from many states, in which Ohio and New York were first. Most of these students entered the regular training schools of hospitals with the season of 1918-1919.

Wellesley college, at the request of the "Woman's Land Army of America," established an experiment station on and near its beautiful grounds. It was rather an experiment station than a training school. Its numbers were limited to thirty, who came themselves from several colleges and who were already teachers, housekeepers, farmers and holders of good business places. It was in part a camp for farmers. Expert instruction was also given in hygiene, sanitation and first aid.

In this diverse work Smith College in coöperation with the Boston Psychopathic Hospital conducted a small school for psychiatric association work, having in mind the special purpose of giving aid to shellshocked sufferers. Bryn Mawr provided special service in training leaders in industrial plants, and Mount Holyoke in educating groups of workers to aid women employed in factories to secure good hygienic and moral conditions.

At the tip-end of Cape Cod at Provincetown the Association of Collegiate Alumnae established a Home Clubhouse for the men serving on patrol boats and at the radio stations. It gave an opportunity for recreation in a home atmosphere.

But the services of graduates of the colleges for women were not confined to the home shores. The record of their work, though narrow in scope and confined to small numbers, is most impressive. For the first time in history college women had a definite share in the activities of war or in the repair of war's damages. For it is ever to be remembered that the college for women is a distinctively new creation. The first outstanding institutions did not offer instruction until the close of the Civil War in America.

A division for oversea service was first made by Smith College. Its relief workers were among the first of American Associations to carry help to devastated Northern and Eastern France. Composed of nurses trained and untrained, equipped with the proper medical staff, it bore healing to the sick and the wounded, sight to the blind, feet to the lame, bread to the hungry, a sense of home to the homeless, and cheer to all. To the unit was committed no less than sixteen villages of two thousand people, to whom its members were to become friends. Expelled from their habitat in the spring retreat of 1918, and in peril of capture by the enemy, they yet persevered in season and out of season, in every place open to their service. Their worth in the work of reconstruction was within its field most efficient.

A similar Red Cross unit was commissioned by Wellesley. Among the conditions for membership were besides sound character, a minimum age limit of twenty-five years, a certificate of enduring health, physical and nervous, ability to speak, read and write easy French, a training in medicine or nursing or social service. The unit contained members of diverse facilities: physicians, nurses, dieticians, social experts, executives and secretarial workers were enrolled. One division had no less than one hundred and fifty members. Its special field of work was found among the rapatriés.

Two units were sent from Vassar College, one for canteen service and one for reconstruction. The work done by Vassar graduates is typical of work done by graduates of all colleges. A worker in a canteen unit assigned to the Bordeaux district wrote of her doings: "In those first days I used to visit the camp hospital every morning with writing paper and tobacco and chocolate. In the afternoons I would sell things at the canteen and soon I began to make lemonade. Next I got up some French classes which the boys seem to enjoy . . . . In this last month, I have been made chairman of the entertainment committee and I am responsible for seeing there is something happening at the hut every night. We have an inside and an outside stage and when I can, I try to have two entertainments going on at the same time, as one cannot begin to take care of all the men who flock to the 'Y' in the evenings. Of course every so often they send us entertainers from Bordeaux but not nearly so often as we could wish, so we try to discover the talent that passes through this camp. I have had two signs made:

If you dance, sing, tell a funny story or do any kind of stunt, let us have your name here. We want you to be part of our Camp Hunt theatrical troupe.

 . . . . "It isn't really possible to give much idea in a report of this kind of all the miscellaneous things that crop up for one to do in the course of a week. There are endless wearying details to the arranging of nightly programs --- tramping from one barracks to another to interview your 'talent,' going to commanders to secure coöperation, the getting of 'details' of men to help you with the actual labor of decorating a hail or gathering materials, hunting up men to draw posters to advertise your parties, and multitudes of other things that have to be done. Sometimes you get discouraged with the enormity of the task and the little headway you seem to be making but soon after something will happen --- if it's no more than some boy's exclamation, 'Gee, a real American girl! '--- to make you realize that the kind of thing the women over here are doing can't be tested for tangible results."(30)

It is not the primary function of the historian to draw inferences, but it is fitting for him to say that the record of graduates and students of American colleges for women, serving in the war, at home and abroad, proves that their hearts have the same patriotic beat as the hearts of their brothers. The half century of their college education gives conclusive evidence that they are the saviors of the race quite as truly as their fathers, brothers, husbands and children. Their strength has been tried and found not to be wanting in any crisis to which that strength has been applied. Their education creates a new asset for and in humanity. The higher education has in the past been the subject of many fears. Among the fears was the apprehension lest this education would tend to make women remote in feeling from the world and unconscious of its hard, perplexing problems. A dread was felt that education might tend to nourish morbidity and unworthy self-consciousness; and that this self-consciousness might create vanity and a spirit of disdain and contempt for the weaker classes. For many years before the outbreak of the war these fears seemed to fair-minded observers to be groundless. The war has conclusively and lastingly proved that women are able to stand in their places, doing their simple duty, whatever that duty might be. These college graduates have been, decorated for bravery under fire. The number thus honored is small. But in conditions demanding heroism quite as great and endurance quite as severe, without resulting decorations of war crosses or orders of merit, they have proved themselves to be the worthiest.

In the period in which such service was rendered abroad, women at home, still students in the colleges, were seeking to do their duty. Despite "alarums and excursions," despite Red Cross calls, despite the demands of the manifold war work, despite the perils of infantile paralysis, and the devastating and disruptions of influenza of the autumn of 1918, the colleges for women kept steadily at their daily and weekly tasks. Students continued to go on their way toward their academic goal. An example of such steadiness and progress is found in the oldest of the great colleges for women. The President of Vassar College, writing in his annual report, said:

"It is recorded in the Dean's report for the current academic year that, while in June, 1917, there were 689 who had never had a deficiency, of the 1060 students now in college 742 have never had a condition, and 85 per cent. of the student body are above our well defined requirements of the graduation grade."(31)

Such testimony has great value as evidence that, though the college girl was moved by the far-off conditions of the world's suffering, yet she was faithful to the immediate duty.