guages for example, we had not.

At first we didn't know where our leaders were, and in many cases we
began by following false prophets. The value of one man with training,
brains and persistence can be shown by a single example: There was a man
who answered these qualifications connected with the Council of National
Defence, not in a very exalted position. He was the first in all this
country to see that the army program and the shipping program did not
fit. It took him a long time to convince the two groups of overworked,
harried officials that neither could play the game alone; that the
closest cooperation was necessary. He had no access to the records, but
he finally managed to build up a convincing statement out of the shreds
of information which he gathered here and there, and at last he
succeeded in getting everyone concerned into the attitude of wanting to
face the facts. Everyone would have had to face them sooner or later,
but without the devotion and leadership of this one man, it would have
been only as the result of a very serious dislocation of function.

One field in which the right leadership has been most brilliantly
rewarded is that of medicine. Just consider what we have done in this
field: The success of the anti-typhoid injections; the reduction in
dysenteric diseases due to chlorination of drinking water; the
encouraging fight against cerebro-spinal meningitis and pneumonia; the
identification of trench fever, and the practical freedom from typhus.
As to wounds, a tetanus antitoxin which has made lock-jaw almost a
negligible disease; a serum against gas gangrene; the Carrel-Dakin
method of chemical sterilization of wounds; the splinting of fractures
on the battle field and overhead extension apparatus in the hospital. To
quote Simon Flexner, "The entire psychology of the wounded men was
altered, the wards made cheerful and happy, pain abolished, infection
controlled, and recovery hastened by means of the new or improved
surgical and mechanical measures put into common use."

* * * * *

The fourth lesson of which I wish to speak is that a high aim and ideal
is what counts most of all, what lifts the individual up from
selfishness and sloth. To bind the country together and to make the
transformation which still seems miraculous, we had a noble national
aim, a complete dedication to the task before us, an utter absence of
any selfish or self-seeking factor in the who