DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH.* 



J. Franklin Jameson, Director. 



The following report, the tenth annual report of the present Director, 

 covers the period from November 1, 1914, to October 31, 1915. The 

 regular staff of the Department has continued without change during 

 the year. Rear-Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, U. S. N., retired, began on 

 November 1, 1914, a term of assistance to the Department in the 

 capacity of Research Associate, which was intended to continue for 

 six months, but which was cut short at the end of one month by his 

 death. The exciting events of the great European war had greatly 

 affected his health, and his constitution was no longer as strong as in 

 earher periods of his life. He therefore came to the service of the 

 Institution a sick man and was able to render to the Department only 

 a part of the service which he had hoped to perform when, in a better 

 state of health, he had made his engagement with the Institution. 

 Nevertheless, such were the directness, lucidity, and force of his mind 

 and the value and stimulating quality of the thoughts set forth in his 

 books and in his few lectures to the staff, that he left upon the Depart- 

 ment an impress which will have long-continued effects, while the 

 obvious nobiUty of his character and the charm of his conversation, 

 endearing him to all members of the staff, left with them a memory 

 which will always be treasured. 



Professor R. H. Whitbeck, of the University of Wisconsin, on leave 

 of absence from his university, began in October 1914 a period of assist- 

 ance to the Department, which terminated early in February 1915. 

 Professor Frank A. Golder, of the Washington State College, who had 

 been employed for the Department in Petrograd and Moscow, left the 

 former city in the middle of November 1914 and, with considerable diffi- 

 culty, made his way back by way of Siberia to Washington, where he 

 worked for some months in the offices of the Department. 



The Department has continued to occupy the same quarters as in 

 preceding years, in the Woodward Building in Washington. The 

 usual removal of headquarters to Maine in the middle of June did not 

 take place. The Director went at that time to California, where he 

 attended the meeting of the American Historical Association, and by 

 this and other means increased his acquaintance and scientific rela- 

 tions with the members of the historical profession resident in the 

 western half of the United States. For a month after his return, in 

 the middle of August, that portion of the work of the Department 

 which is most inunediately under liis care was carried on, with the 

 assistance of a part of the staff, at Grand Isle, Vermont. Since the 



♦Address: 1140 Woodward Building, Washington, D. C. 

 174 



