REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1919. 13 



annually, for a period of a decade, one-half of the income of 

 this addition to endowment, as a reserve fund "against losses, 

 emergencies, reduction in income, and the diminishing pur- 

 chasing power of money." 



His interest in the work of the Institution continued to the 

 end. His last signed letter to the President, dated September 

 27, 1918, begins with the characteristic sentence: "Your very 

 kind letters reporting from time to time the progress of the 

 Institution give me rare pleasure." He was especially glad to 

 learn of the numerous ways in which the Institution and its 

 staffs were able to assist the United States Government during 

 the world war. That our archeologists, biologists, historians, 

 philologists, and other speciaUsts should be called into service; 

 that the Geophysical Laboratory should undertake the manu- 

 facture of optical glass; that the Mount Wilson Observatory 

 should engage to construct optical adjuncts for artillery, or that 

 the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism should be able to 

 render technical aid to the Army and the Navy, furnished an 

 unexpected and impressive experience to him as well as to others 

 not intimately acquainted with the details of these affairs. 

 Even as late as June 1919, about two months before his death, 

 when his strength was evidently rapidly waning, he was eager 

 to learn of the latest developments of what he familiarly called 

 the "Research Commission." His ideaHsm was still as domi- 

 nant as it was when he expressed the hope in his letter to the 

 Trustees of January 19, 1911, referred to above, that "the work 

 on Mount Wilson will be vigorously pushed, because I am so 

 anxious to hear the expected results from it. I should hke to be 

 satisfied, before I depart, that we are going to repay to the old 

 land some part of the debt we owe them by revealing more 

 clearly than ever to them the new heavens." He did not live to 

 reahze this hope. The world war postponed, for nearly two 

 years, the use of the 100-inch telescope, in which he was par- 

 ticularly interested, so that the results he anticipated from it 

 are only now beginning to appear. But he was content, as 

 indeed all of his contemporary Trustees must be content, with 

 the reflection that the best work of the Institution is not so 

 much for the present and for us as for the future and for our 

 successors. 



