ction can be regarded as a scholar
in his particular field; but the point I want to make is that during his
service as Quartermaster-General, when officers of the regular army and
over-night majors, as they were called, presidents of manufacturing
plants, bankers and lawyers, were passing in what seemed to be an almost
unbroken procession through his office, he retained just two men in his
inner circle from first to last, and both were academic persons. Herbert
Hoover surrounded himself with scholars, entomologists, statisticians
and public health men. He did not always use them for their specialties,
but he evidently liked the type. The great welfare societies did the
same, and the list of academic men whom they used makes an impressive
total.

These instances are typical of a very general success among scholars in
cooperating effectively and helpfully with eminently practical men. This
may be because the scholar has been trained in a form of competition
which the so-called practical man lacked. He is used to having his work
wiped out by some discovery of a rival, and having to begin afresh. He
is used to a checking of his work by his fellows which, if of a
different nature, is no less relentless than the war-time check in the
toll of human lives. The man of high reputation in business often failed
because he had learned to measure success and his own competence only in
terms of dividends, and in the new test he found his measuring-rod worse
than useless.

Our scholars of the cooperative type not only pursued their researches,
but they got their military associates into the habit of thinking in
terms of scholarship. One of their most useful accomplishments,
initiated by a Doctor of Philosophy of this University, was the
organization of Thursday evening conferences for the discussion of the
new scientific and technical problems facing the Army and Navy. This
furnished a nucleus for the exchange of ideas between the different
research groups, both here and abroad; for scholarship was mobilized and
utilized in France, England, and Italy, as well as here, and our Allies
laid their scientific discoveries before us with the greatest loyalty.
At these conferences their reports were discussed and digested and
applied, instead of being pigeon-holed at the War College, as I fear
might have been otherwise the case. It was as a result of one of these
conferences that a member of this Chapter, acting on a hint which came
from a F