402 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.40 



It was inevitable that the losses of personnel and the assignment 

 of unusual duties should have its effect upon the regular work of 

 the stations, but they could well afford to lend their forces tem- 

 porarily for such a cause, and it is a matter <>f pride that they 

 could take the part tiny did in addition to the regular contributions 

 made in their particular field. 



Those men who have been out from the stations on special war 

 service have been brought into contact with organized effort on an 

 extensive scale, and have seen the -t length of union in accomplish- 

 ing things that needed to be done quickly and effectively. They 

 have taken part in team work and enterprises where the parts were 

 coordinated. They have been doing hard things involving intensive 

 application to a problem or an undertaking that must be accom- 

 plished. They have felt tin- impelling force of necessity and seen the 

 remarkable things accomplished under it. even in research. 



This is a new experience for research and for research workers. 

 Men were brought together and set to work with definite ends in 

 mind, and the individual was to an extent engulfed in the genera] 

 undertaking. He learned to subordinate self. And the success 

 which followed the employment of existing knowledge and the search 

 for new information to meet new need- was one of the distinct 

 accomplishments of the war. 



This war work of the men of science has been described by one 

 of them as "participation in a bi^r collective undertaking where the 

 end bought was a victory from which, in all probability, one would 

 derive no calculable private reward whatsoever. ... It signified 

 that for the time being one had forgotten selfish ambitions and be- 

 come absorbed in a new and bigger thing. ... It proved the love 

 of doing well something that one could put one'- heart in: the love 

 of expending energy with an undivided conscience, and with the ap- 

 proval of one's fellows. It was the Midden consciousness <>f the new 

 comradeship springing from coordinated and enthusiastic effort; 

 above all it was a sense of scope and power." 



To many it was a first experience with the real meaning of emer- 

 gency. They were under the stern compulsion of getting thing- done. 

 They found that their experience and training had given them ca- 

 pacity to meet an emergency, to think to a purpose, and to carry 

 their thinking through to the final end. The emergency was both 

 a profound and a common one. " Being a profound emergency it has 

 forced men to go back even to first principles in their thinking: and 

 being a common emergency it has forced men to meet it together in 

 thought and in action. So that the effect on men's minds has been 

 to emancipate them from the trivial and tu redeem them from the 

 selfish." 



