The University of Michigan Part 17

In the Navy a large proportion of the Michigan men were members of the Michigan State Naval Brigade on the U.S.S. _Yosemite_, of which Dean M.E. Cooley, at that time Professor of Mechanical Engineering, was Chief Engineer. The _Yosemite_ was a converted yacht used as a scout and convoy. Within a month after going into commission she was a.s.signed to the task of convoying some 800 marines on the _Panther_ to Guantanamo.

It happened that the first load was taken ash.o.r.e on June 10 by one of the boats of the _Yosemite_ and it is said the first American flag was planted on Cuban soil by a University of Michigan member of the crew.

Later in June the _Yosemite_ met a big Spanish mail steamer, the _Antonio Lopez_, with ammunition and supplies for San Juan and succeeded in beaching her under the fierce fire of the sh.o.r.e batteries and after attacks by three Spanish gunboats, which were twice driven into the harbor.

In addition to many graduates and students of the Medical Department attached to the different units, two members of the Faculty, Dean Victor C. Vaughan, Divisional Surgeon at Siboney, and Dr. C.B.G. de Nancrede, Surgeon of the 34th, saw active service in Cuba as Majors on the Medical Staff. Their courage and devotion to duty were mentioned in the Surgeon-General's report.

Michigan was also represented in the war cabinet by its leader, William R. Day, '70, Secretary of State, while the a.s.sistant Secretary of War, a most important post in those exciting months, was George DeRue Meiklejohn, '80_l_. Judge Day was also President of the commission which negotiated the peace at Paris after the war, with Cushman K. Davis, '57, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, as one of the other members.

According to the latest available records there were at least 12,000 sons of the University of Michigan in service during the World War. Of this number over 229 gave their lives for the principles for which America was fighting. At the Seventy-fifth Commencement, which came the year following the Armistice, the University's service flag, which hung in Hill Auditorium, revealed the fact that at that time the names were known of 10,243 students and alumni in uniform. This figure mounted rapidly in subsequent months, though the difficulties of following the careers of many former soldiers through the period of demobilization have made it very difficult to obtain even an approximately correct estimate. This is particularly true in the case of thousands of students who left the University during the years 1917 and 1918. An a.n.a.lysis of the figures given on the service flag showed that of the total 7,669 were known to be actually in service while 2,747 were in the University, enrolled in the army and navy units of the Student Army Training Corps.

As these men were in uniform and regularly inducted in the two branches of service and would all have been sent overseas within a short time had the war continued, their names must be included.

Such are the bare statistics of Michigan's part in the fight for the principles which have made America what she is. The war came slowly to the University. During the years just preceding the entrance of the United States there was probably no part of the world as little touched by the actualities overseas as the mid-western portion of the United States. The seaboard states felt it, in their commerce and other contacts with Europe, far more than the vast central region, which had been favored with an unexampled wave of prosperity. So while America was at peace, the war spirit in the University was for the most part latent, far more so than in many of the universities of the East, where the implications and the realities of the war, which always come more vividly through personal relations.h.i.+ps, led to more vigorous preparatory measures and many enlistments for service in the English, Canadian, and French armies.

The lessons the struggle on the Marne, in Flanders and Gallipoli was teaching were by no means unheeded, however, and a strong movement for military training in the University developed as early as November, 1914, when a pet.i.tion signed by fifty members of the Faculty, including the Deans of the Medical, Engineering, and Law Schools, for the establishment of a military course in the University was presented to the Regents. This had no immediate effect, however, and it was not until the University Senate took similar action a year later that the movement was really inaugurated. The opinion was as yet by no means unanimous in favor of the plan, for a straw vote of the Faculty showed 85 for and 55 against the general principle of military training for students, with a somewhat smaller majority in favor of making it compulsory. A similar vote among the students showed 1,040 for the plan and 932 against it. In March, 1916, the Regents took favorable action on the project, though the course was not compulsory. Several military companies and a naval reserve unit were organized immediately, and the students were encouraged to attend the summer camps at Plattsburg and Fort Sheridan.

It took over a year and the stimulus of the actual entry of the United States into the war to bring to practical completion the plan of the Regents for voluntary training, with a course in military science inst.i.tuted under officers designated by the War Department. Co-operation on the part of the Government, too, came slowly. There was great difficulty in harmonizing the University system with the government plan for college military training which was embodied in General Orders 49, establis.h.i.+ng a Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Many meetings took place between officers detailed by the War Department and a committee, composed of the heads of various universities, of which President Hutchins was a member, before a modification of the government program was eventually secured. This made the prescribed course more elastic, and put military drill wholly or in part in summer camps. Inasmuch as the students under this plan could not be appointed reserve officers without examinations, it was not strictly the R.O.T.C. as originally contemplated by the Government, but it was a practical solution. As a matter of fact most of these difficulties of organization vanished when the United States entered the war, on April 6, 1917, in the general enthusiasm and eagerness to serve. The great practical question became a matter of the detail of a competent army officer to the University.

Meanwhile the students lost no time; little companies could be seen drilling everywhere on the streets. Three hundred students stayed over the spring vacation and drilled for four hours every afternoon. By May 315 men had been recommended for training camps, and 500 had left the University to enlist. The Regents also authorized the circulation of the 43,000 alumni and former students for the University Intelligence Bureau, and 25,000 replies, giving the qualifications of each individual for various forms of war service, were received. The Engineering College announced seven preliminary courses in military science, while the Medical School, with almost the whole Faculty enlisted, foreseeing the need of surgeons turned its whole force to training the upper cla.s.smen, and the Law School so arranged its programme that twelve hours a week were given over to drill. The upper cla.s.s medical, engineering, and dental students were also enlisted as reserves while completing their courses.

It was not until October, 1917, that the Officers' Training Corps really got under way, as a definite part of the curriculum. But once started the response was overwhelming. Though the attendance in the University had declined by 1,239, and the course was not compulsory, there were 1,800 enrolled by the end of the first week. To introduce this great body of embryo soldiers to the rudiments of military drill the Government sent just one officer, Lieut. George C. Mullen, who had retired after some years' service in the earlier Philippine campaigns.

Later came two sergeants, and another officer, Lieut. Losey J. Williams.

With this slender force, and the aid of a company of Faculty men who drilled every night in order to prepare themselves as advisors, or "tactical officers" to supervise the student company commanders and with 300 old rifles, Michigan managed to "carry on," maintaining the largest, though owing to these difficulties probably not the most effective R.O.T.C. organization in the country. Nevertheless it served a very useful purpose, as its continually dwindling ranks indicated; for the better men were leaving all the time for the numerous training camps which had been established in the meantime. Of the 800 who received commissions after the first course at Camp Custer only 60 percent survived, but among these were all the candidates sent from the Michigan R.O.T.C., twenty-two of whom were included in the first hundred.

The University may also claim particular credit for the development of courses in army stores, which were first inst.i.tuted by Professor, later Lieutenant-Colonel, Joseph A. Bursley, '99_e_. This course, which aimed to fit men for the ordnance and quartermasters departments, grew through six successive increments every six weeks, to about 250 men, and proved so practical and effective that similar courses were installed in other universities. In the same manner similar short courses were established in the Engineering College for the training of mechanics, particularly in the maintenance and repair of gas engines. The first course of eight weeks began on April 15, 1917, and prepared 195 men for this important branch of the service. A detachment of 700 men followed which included 500 automobile repair men, 100 general mechanics, 60 gunsmiths, and 40 carpenters.

These men came as enlisted soldiers and were under the command of Captain, later Major, R.H. Durkee. Five old residences belonging to the University were transformed into barracks, while the still far from completed Union was used as a mess hall. The laboratory facilities of the Engineering College naturally proved inadequate for so large a number, and temporary buildings sprang up rapidly in every open s.p.a.ce nearby, erected by the men in the detachments. In addition to the technical training given these men, who were not, however, enrolled as university students, various special courses were given in war aims which proved of great value in furthering morale. This whole effort proved so effective that the Government desired to make a contract for the training of 2,800 men from October, 1918, through July, 1919; but this was more than the University could care for, though it agreed to take 1,140, including 60 telephone linemen, and 600 telephone electricians.

The next step came in the establishment of the Students' Army Training Corps in the fall of 1918. This was designed to correct the weaknesses, revealed under the stress of war-time conditions, in the old R.O.T.C., which in most universities did not furnish really effective military training for the emergency, particularly in the matter of discipline.

The pa.s.sing of the draft law also threatened the very existence of many of the private colleges and the plan to carry on university work and military training, side by side, while the students were actually inducted and under strict military discipline, seemed an ideal solution of a most threatening problem. Michigan, therefore, in common with every other college and university which could muster the necessary one hundred students, became in effect a military academy with the opening of the University in October, 1918, though of course there were many students not enrolled in the S.A.T.C., particularly the women, and the medical, engineering, and dental reserves who were completing their courses. The total S.A.T.C. enlistment was 2,727, of whom 2,151 were enrolled in the Army, and 586 in the Naval Training Corps; these were entered as regular students in the University, while 2,247 more in Section B, the army mechanics course, were not considered University students.

Thus with the largest S.A.T.C. enrolment of any university in the country, Michigan gladly devoted all her resources to the one supreme aim of training soldiers. Practically every fraternity house was turned over to the War Department 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 officers, and restoring the scheme to its original essentially educational policy; for, in the original plan, the military features were to go only so far as to enable the authorities to select the best men for further intensive training at the officers'

camps.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STUDENTS' ARMY TRAINING CORPS Drawn up before the Michigan Union (fall of 1918)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE FOURTEEN-INCH NAVAL GUNS IN FRANCE Whose crews were largely composed of the Michigan Naval Volunteers]

This broad military programme was by no means confined to the students, as the whole curriculum of the University was necessarily almost wholly subordinated to the new scheme. Many courses not included in the outline prescribed by the Government, such as the cla.s.sics, fine arts, and philosophy, were practically discontinued or given in a limited form to the few men not in service and the women students in the University.

Many members of the Faculty abandoned their own subjects entirely and confined their work to the courses on war issues, which had come to form an important part of the new curriculum, or to elementary work in modern languages, especially French; German being for the most part anathema.

This was a mistake; as one government inspector, himself a teacher of English, was accustomed to say emphatically, German was going to be needed even more than French; and so it turned out in the later days of the occupation of Germany. Nevertheless the decline of interest in the German language and literature, which had long been so carefully cultivated, as we can see now, by the German government, is one of the permanent results of the war; while there has been a corresponding increase in the study of French and Spanish.

Throughout this period, the women of the University were far from pa.s.sive spectators. Special courses in household economics, conservation of food, French, journalism, and publicity and the principles of censors.h.i.+p, as well as a course in drafting in the Engineering College were provided for them. The women of the Faculty and town threw themselves indefatigably into Red Cross service, with the presidential residence on the Campus, known as Angell House, as one of the princ.i.p.al headquarters. A Hostess House was also maintained in the parlors of Barbour Gymnasium for the families and sweethearts of men in the training detachments, while at one time the great floor of Waterman Gymnasium was used as a barracks. With the inauguration of the S.A.T.C., Alumni Memorial Hall was taken over as a Hostess House and maintained entirely by Ann Arbor women. Likewise during the worst of the influenza epidemic, the terrors of which were multiplied by the constant arrival of stricken men in new detachments, and the lack of adequate hospital facilities for such an unforeseen emergency, the women gave themselves, and in some cases their homes, to the cause, and helped to save many lives.

Thus the University gave itself over unreservedly to winning the war. No one can measure how great actually and potentially that service was. But Michigan's contribution was far from resting there. Thousands of her sons, alumni and students, were in service, a goodly proportion with the forces in France and elsewhere and with the Navy, while at least 229 are to be represented by a gold star on the University's great service flag.

Though Michigan officially remained aloof from active partic.i.p.ation in the issues of the struggle before America entered it, she had many representatives in the fighting ranks. Professor Rene Talamon, of the French Department, who was spending his honeymoon in France, entered the French Army in 1914 and saw active service in all the great earlier battles, winning the Croix de Guerre on the field. He remained in uniform throughout the four years and completed his record by acting as interpreter at the Peace Conference. Frederic W. Zinn, '14_e_ a student just graduated, was of that immortal company of Americans in the French Foreign Legion, whose exploits have so often been told, and was one of the twelve survivors of a section of sixty. He was severely wounded in the Champagne offensive and subsequently entered the French and later the American Aviation Services. There were also many Michigan men scattered through the British and Canadian forces, and at least one, Stanley J. Schooley, _e_'09-'12, was with the Anzacs to the end at Gallipoli. George B.F. Monk, '13_d_, a Lieutenant in the Royal Warwicks.h.i.+res, was killed in Flanders, December 18, 1914, while another dental graduate, John Austen Ogden, '04_d_, was killed in France. Lieut.

Thomas C. Bechraft, '09_l_, who enlisted with the Canadians, was killed by a sniper at the great British attack on Vimy Ridge, April 4, 1917;--one wonders whether he knew then that America had entered the war; and Theodore Harvey Clark, '14, died from sunstroke, September 9, 1917, while serving with the Y.M.C.A. in Mesopotamia.

Of the little company of Americans in the French ambulance service, among whom were a number of former students of the University, were the two Hall brothers, sons of Dr. Louis P. Hall, '89_d_, Professor of Dentistry in the University. Richard Nelville Hall, '11-'12, who later was graduated from Dartmouth, was killed on Christmas morning, 1915, when his car was struck by a stray sh.e.l.l, the first American to be killed in the ambulance service. His brother Louis P. Hall, Dartmouth, '12, Michigan, '14_e_, later became a lieutenant in the French army, and eventually captain in the American Expeditionary Forces.

It will thus be seen that Michigan's share in the war did not await the entry of America among the Allies, although it was not until the forces of the country were definitely enlisted that her real contribution, in men and services, was made. With the opening of the great training camps, the alumni, particularly those of more recent years, as well as the students of the University volunteered literally in thousands, and Michigan was soon represented by men and officers in every branch of the service. They were in the first contingent of the expeditionary forces, the Rainbow Division, and figured prominently in the earliest fighting about the St. Mihiel salient, at Cantigny, and later with the Marines at Belleau Wood. Many were of course held in America, to their disgust, to train the new levies under the draft law, while others were a.s.signed particular duties for which their special training had fitted them. Thus we find Michigan represented everywhere in the Medical and Dental Corps, the early engineering battalions, the rapidly evolving work of the signal corps, the military intelligence and censors.h.i.+p divisions, gas warfare and gas defense, publicity, and perhaps above all, the aviation service, for which the young college man seemed peculiarly fitted. There were several Michigan men among the first aviation sections in France; several were killed and others captured in early combats. The arrival of the later contingents brought Michigan men with every division; they were everywhere in the Argonne battle, they were with the famous "lost battalion," and with the American forces included in the British sectors, as well as among the engineers who helped to stop the gap after the disaster to the Fifth British Army.

Perhaps the most striking contribution Michigan made towards winning the war was in manning the big naval guns which did more than any one thing to cut the German lines of communication through the gap by Sedan between Longuyon and Montmedy. It is not too much to say that it was the work of these guns, in the hands of the men and officers recruited largely from the two naval divisions who left the University in the spring of 1917, that formed one of the great arguments which led to the Armistice of November 11. These two divisions of about seventy men each were organized in the fall of 1916, and with the entry of the United States in the war were immediately mustered into service with Professors J.R. Hayden of the Department of Political Science and Orange J. McNiel of the Engineering College as the commanding officers. For some time they were held in Ann Arbor, where they were quartered in the Gymnasium, later going to the Great Lakes Training Station for further preparation.

Within a short time they were a.s.signed to the various rifle ranges which were being established up and down the Atlantic coast by Major Harllee of the Marine Corps and given intensive training in gunnery. So well did they show up in this specialized task, for intensive training in marksmans.h.i.+p was one of the Navy's great needs, that little squads of the men were sent everywhere to install and open up new ranges.

Meanwhile the need of big guns on the French front was becoming more and more apparent and one officer, Captain, and later Admiral, Plunkett bethought him of a number of great 14-inch navy guns which were not in use. He conceived the idea of mounting these on railway carriages and making great mobile batteries of them. At first he was laughed at; it was impossible to make heavy enough trucks to carry such a weight; and then, where were the expert men to man them? He replied that he knew where he could get the men and called in experts to design the carriages. The result was that in just fifty days the first gun was successfully fired from the railway mounting at the proving ground at Sandy Hook, by the Michigan Naval Volunteers. When the guns were s.h.i.+pped to France all the Michigan men available were sent with them and formed the effective nucleus of every crew. They wore the marine uniform with naval insignia and were under naval discipline throughout; they went "fore" and "aft" on the great trains which accompanied each gun, pointed their pieces to "port" and "starboard" and were rated according to navy ranking.

Their great task came when the guns with their equipment first landed at St. Nazaire. Not only was it necessary to a.s.semble the guns, but also the locomotives and accompanying armored cars. All of this work was done by the men of the two units as officers and petty officers. When these guns finally got into action, they outranged every battery on any front and, striking at the German railway lines of communication, now from this point and then that, they threw the whole "neck of the bottle"

toward which the American forces were driving into hopeless confusion.

Of the men in these two battalions over sixty percent received commissions, and of the others, almost all held high ratings as petty officers with responsibilities ordinarily only a.s.sumed by commissioned officers.

With so great a number of Michigan men with the expeditionary forces, the University was particularly interested in their welfare while "over there." From the first Michigan took a prominent part in the establishment of the American University Union in Paris, of which President Hutchins was one of the first Board of Trustees. Professor Charles B. Vibbert, '04, of the Department of Philosophy was appointed Director of the Michigan Bureau by President Hutchins and was made one of the Executive Committee in Paris. Here he rendered most effective service to the hundreds of Michigan men who used the club house, a large hotel in the heart of Paris, as their headquarters. He was also a.s.signed as his special duty, the promotion of friendly relations between the Americans and the French people of Paris, and so successful was he in this task that he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government. After the end of the demobilization period he remained in Paris for a time as Director of a permanent Union which succeeded the war organization. Two other representatives of the University, Mr. Warren J. Vinton, '11, for some time Professor Vibbert's a.s.sistant, and a.s.sistant Professor Philip E. Bursley, '02, one of the general secretaries, were on the Union's staff.

No review of Michigan's record in the war would be complete without a word as to the share of the Faculty. As never before this was a war of scientists and technically trained men. There was hardly a subject taught in the University which did not fit in somewhere, while the work of such departments as chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and the various branches of engineering, to say nothing of the Schools of Medicine and the Colleges of Dentistry and Pharmacy, proved absolutely indispensable. Long before this country entered the war Dean M.E. Cooley had offered his services to the Government, when the crisis which he and many others foresaw, should come.

In all there were 162 members of the Faculty in various forms of war service, a large proportion of them in uniform. Among those to whom were a.s.signed particularly noteworthy tasks were Dean Victor C. Vaughan, '78_m_, of the Medical Advisory Board of the Council of National Defense and later Colonel on the staff of the Surgeon-General in Was.h.i.+ngton, where was also Dr. Walter R. Parker, '88_e_, Professor of Ophthalmology, who as Lieutenant-Colonel in the Medical Corps had charge of head surgery. Dr. Udo J. Wile, Professor of Dermatology, Major in the Medical Corps, was among the earliest medical officers abroad, where he was in charge of the first American hospital in England, near Liverpool.

In the Literary College, among the many who early entered service were Jesse S. Reeves, Professor of Political Science, who entered the Aviation Service and later the Judge Advocates' Department, holding the rank of major; Peter Field, a.s.sociate Professor of Mathematics, who, as Major in the Ordnance Department, had charge of the tests and ballistic computations, as well as serving as armament officer, at the Sandy Hook proving grounds; Moses Gomberg, '90, Professor of Organic Chemistry, who as Major in the Ordnance Service made valuable investigations, and Professor H.R. Cross of the Department of Fine Arts, who held an important post with the Red Cross in Italy.

The men of technical training of the Engineering Faculty were especially in demand and practically every man in one Department, that of Chemical Engineering was in service. Alfred H. White, '93, Professor of Chemical Engineering, became Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of the construction of the great government nitrate plants; Walter T. Fishleigh, '02, '06_e_, a.s.sociate Professor of Automobile Engineering, as Lieutenant-Colonel, was, with Major Gordon Stoner, '04, '06_l_, Professor of Law in the University, in charge of the design and purchase of all the ambulances for the Medical Corps. Lieutenant-Colonel William C. Hoad, Professor of Sanitary Engineering, took charge of the sanitation of the big training camps.

Many other members of the Faculty, in civilian capacities, gave no less valuable services to the Government. Professor Herbert C. Sadler, head of the Department of Marine Engineering, became chief of the department of s.h.i.+p design of the Emergency Fleet Corporation; James W. Glover, Professor of Mathematics and Insurance, was a member of the War Risk Board; Dr. G. Carl Huber, '87_m_, Professor of Anatomy, carried on an extended series of investigations of the peripheral nerves, with the a.s.sistance of medical officers detailed to his laboratory by the Surgeon-General; David Friday, '08, Professor of Economics, was Statistical Advisor to the Treasury Department and later the Telephone and Telegraph Administration, while Dean Henry M. Bates, '90, of the Law School, and Professor H.C. Adams, head of the Department of Economics, also at various times acted in advisory capacities at Was.h.i.+ngton.

Francis L. D. Goodrich, '03, was also Reference Librarian at the University of the American Expeditionary Force at Beaune, France.

With the end of the war every effort was made to bring the University back to normal conditions as soon as possible. The speedy demobilization of the S.A.T.C. made advisable the abandonment of the plan of a year of four quarters and the semester system was restored by February. The members of the Faculty gradually returned during the year, and by the fall of 1919 everything was as usual, save for the extraordinary enrolment, which totaled 8,057 students on the Campus during the year, with a grand total of 9,401 in all, including the Summer Session. This increase was largely due to the men returning from service to finish their abandoned work, or to take up a belated University course. Eighty men who had been wounded were sent by the Government Rehabilitation Division.

Such an unprecedented number of students, which was larger by 1,500 than ever before, naturally brought with it many difficult problems, particularly in living accommodations. These difficulties were aggravated by the sharp rise in room rent and board, which brought hards.h.i.+p in many cases and was only adjusted by the prompt action of the Rooming Bureau of the Michigan Union, which made a complete survey of the city and brought pressure to bear in cases of outrageous profiteering. Equally difficult proved the question of teachers and cla.s.s rooms in the University. This was only solved after many new instructors were engaged, a difficult matter at so late a period in the year, and the creation of many emergency cla.s.s rooms. Special credits were also given the men returning from service, in some cases as high as fifteen hours, equaling a semester's work, in recognition of their special war-time experience and training and the new earnestness and appreciation of what a university education meant, with which they returned to their cla.s.s rooms and laboratories.

University life speedily returned to its accustomed channels; only the service b.u.t.tons, the modest ribbons in lapels, and khaki and blue overcoats remained to suggest the Campus of a year before. So great was the reaction from things military that the re-establishment of the R.O.T.C. in modified form came slowly. Eventually about 180 men, largely from the freshmen and soph.o.m.ore cla.s.ses, were enrolled in the artillery and signal service units under the two officers detailed to the University, Captain Robert Arthur and Captain John P. Lucas, who held the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonels in France. These courses promise much for the future, however, though during the University year the work is confined to technical training, with the drill to come in the annual summer camps which every man enrolled must attend. Not only will men be continually in training as reserve officers, effective at once in an emergency, but also they will form a nucleus around which a really effective training corps for the general student body can be built at any time when the necessity arises. If this work develops as it should, and comes to form an integral part of university life, we shall have profited by one of the lessons of the Great War, and with similar courses installed in all our great educational centers, America will be ready, as she was not in 1917.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ALUMNI OF THE UNIVERSITY

Just at present Michigan probably has the largest body of alumni of any university in the country. The total number of graduates in January, 1920, was 34,817, of whom 28,901 were living, while the total of graduates and former students was 60,463. Of this number 11,420 were known to be deceased. The number of addresses on the University lists at that time was 43,783. There are several reasons for this large alumni body. In the first place few universities have many living graduates of the cla.s.ses which graduated before 1850; Michigan's oldest graduates at present are George W. Carter, '53_m_, of Boulder, Colorado, and John E.

Clark, '56, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Yale. After her first few years Michigan had as many students enrolled as most of the other inst.i.tutions of that time, while the extraordinary growth of the Medical and Law Schools in the period just after the Civil War probably gave her the largest number of students in any university.

This, with the great increase which has come to all universities and particularly the state inst.i.tutions within the last twenty years or so, has given Michigan an unusually large body of alumni. There are, however, a number of universities, notably Columbia, California, and Chicago, which have had a very large enrolment of late years, and it is not unlikely that within a few years their alumni catalogues will contain more names than Michigan's. It may be remarked in connection with the relatively large proportion of those who have not received degrees, about 42 percent of the total, that this number has been increased by war-time conditions, and that judging from former records it is about ten percent higher than in more normal times.

Michigan has always taken an especial pride in the fact that, although a state university, her student body has been recruited almost as much from the rest of the country as from Michigan; while there has always been a not inconsiderable proportion of students from foreign countries.

This national enrolment has had a broadening and stimulating effect upon the student body and has given the University a powerful influence throughout the country. Her graduates are to be found in every state in the Union, though they are probably proportionately stronger in the states west of the Mississippi, whose development came just in time to attract the enterprising and vigorous youth who had his future to make and gladly seized the opportunity to grow up with the new country.

Michigan, with her low tuition charges, even for non-residents, and her equally moderate cost of living, has been also pre-eminently a college for students of limited means. Thus, while there are many men of wealth among her alumni, they are almost all men who have made their own way, and have a position in their communities corresponding to their energy and proved ability.

For some years the attendance from Michigan, though it is somewhat greater now, has averaged 55 percent. This is unusually significant when the great extent of the State is considered, particularly since most of the students from the Northern Peninsula usually pa.s.s through three other states to reach Ann Arbor. Not less worthy of note is the fact that only about 39 percent of the graduates of the University live within the State, proof positive that Michigan, in sending her students abroad, is performing a great service for the country. The percentages of alumni in other states is also not without interest, for while the neighboring states of Illinois and Ohio claim about 8 percent and Indiana 3.7 percent, New York has 6 percent of Michigan's graduates, while Pennsylvania has 3.5 percent, and California 3.2 percent. About 2.5 percent of Michigan's former students, or 1,093, live in foreign countries. Of these 318 are in Canada, 126 in China, 62 in Great Britain, 61 in South America, 51 in Africa, and 46 in j.a.pan. Of the United States dependencies, 66 are in Porto Rico, 54 in the Philippines, and 17 in Alaska. These figures might easily be increased were the addresses of all alumni found, as there are, no doubt, a large number of "unknowns" in foreign countries. Of the total number of graduates and foreign students for whom the University has addresses, 36,492 are men and 7,291 are women.