tment as a barracks; the mysterious Greek letters
were dropped and henceforth they were known simply by number--officially
at least. The sum of $260,000 was borrowed from the State War Board to
hasten the completion of the Union sufficiently to serve as a mess hall
and kitchen, and this together with a temporary building erected
alongside accommodated some 3,650 men. The Union also furnished sleeping
quarters for 800 student soldiers. The fact that Michigan had a building
so well adapted to the needs of the new situation was perhaps the
principal factor in enabling the University to enter upon the programme
so extensively. Dean Mortimer E. Cooley of the Engineering College was
made Regional Educational Director with the work in all the colleges and
universities in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan under his charge, while
some forty army officers, many of them recent graduates of training
camps, were detailed to the University as officers in charge.

Difficulties arose everywhere from the very first, however. The plan,
which was not definitely approved by the War Department until a month
before the opening of the colleges, was naturally not carefully worked
out in detail. But this was a minor matter compared with a more serious
defect in the general scheme. This was the lack of competent military
officers, men with sufficient vision to co-operate effectively with the
universities. The officers detailed were for the most part retired from
active service, or recent recruits from training camps, and it was the
exaggerated emphasis of things military on the part of the latter class
that was largely responsible for the difficulty, noticeable from the
very first, of maintaining any semblance of university work. The scheme
provided for 42 hours of class work and study (14 hours of recitation
with 28 hours of preparation) and only 13 hours of military drill; but
the almost universal experience was that the military officers wholly
misinterpreted the object of the plan and, with their strict control
over their men, were able to discount, almost completely in some cases,
the educational side of the programme. To add to the confusion, the
onset of the influenza epidemic at just this time made the task of
bringing order out of chaos almost impossible. Nevertheless, by the time
the end came with the signing of the Armistice, measures were under way
which might have saved the situation by curbing the complete ascendancy
of the military o