uld say "No" and prove the
validity of his objection, performed a positive work of great value.
One of our associates at Columbia had a leading share in devising tests
for candidates for the flying school, which, by rejecting the unfit at
the outset, saved many lives from the time of their adoption and many,
many thousands of dollars; for the training of a flyer who cannot be
used when the time comes is a very costly piece of national extravagance
in both money and men.

Our scholars did not confine their activities to the battle of
Washington. Not only as engineers and doctors, but as geologists and
geographers, as meteorologists and sanitarians, they went with the
troops to the front, and their counsel as to actual military operations
was welcomed and followed. One of them, a bachelor and doctor of this
University, died in the service in France. The scholar, like the
soldier, stood ready to step forward to fill the gap in the ranks as he
saw it, regardless of whether something more dignified might be found
for him to do. Our own Barnard, Professor of Education, took what he was
pleased to call his vacation in applying his scholarship to organizing
an educational program for the wounded men in our hospitals, as a
therapeutic measure. Being a scholar and not merely an expert, he saw
the broad human aspect of his specialty; that the first thing to do with
the man who is blinded, or otherwise maimed, is to make him realize that
it is worth while to get well; that he can have a life which is worth
living; that if his old job is no longer possible, there are others for
which he can be trained. One of America's most distinguished
philosophical chemists settled down to the humble but very essential
problem of making mixed flours rise and bake with a crust--and solved
it. The war services of a past President of this Chapter, now, alas, no
longer with us, and those of our present President have been as useful
as they have been inconspicuous.

The need for the scholar was not only qualitative, but quantitative. But
for the general distribution of chemical knowledge in France and
England, and the presence of men capable of promptly applying that
knowledge to combat the gas attacks launched by the Germans, the war
would have been lost before we could possibly have rendered the
slightest assistance; and on our side of the Atlantic when the armistice
was signed, there were two thousand trained chemists engaged in the
problems of g