2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



establishments as the Smithsonian, with its normal functions of 

 research, chiefly in the natural sciences, publication of results of scien- 

 tific researches, museum and art gallery exhibition, and international 

 exchange of literature, the problem is not so simple. Every member 

 of the staff desires earnestly to do his utmost to aid in the war effort, 

 but in many instances, as the following summary of Smithsonian 

 war activities shows, the only possible way of putting the desire into 

 effect is connected only indirectly with war work. Nevertheless, 

 work such as that which the Smithsonian is qualified to perform will, 

 I believe, be seen to fill a definite place in the Nation's all-out war 

 effort. 



The membership of the War Committee is as follows : C. W. Mit- 

 man, engineer, chairman; L. B. Aldrich, physicist; W. N. Fenton, 

 ethnologist; Herbert Friedmann, biologist; and W. P. True, chief, 

 editorial division. For several weeks the committee met every day 

 in the effort to speed up the diversion of as much as possible of the 

 Institution's work into war channels. Several questionnaires were 

 sent to the staff asking for suggestions and detailed information as 

 to the qualifications, travel, and special knowledge of each member. 

 With these data before them, the committee began to make recom- 

 mendations, most of which I approved and put into effect. Those 

 projects which had been initiated up to June 30, 1942, are as follows : 



1. The Institution has prepared a detailed roster of the scientific 

 staff totaling nearly 100 scientists, listing their geographic and special- 

 ized knowledge. Some of this knowledge has proved to be readily 

 available nowhere else, and the roster has been extensively used in 

 connection with inquiries from war agencies. 



2. A record of requests from war agencies for specific informa- 

 tion from individual staff members shows a total of 460 such received 

 since Pearl Harbor. Fifty percent came directly from the War and 

 Navy Departments, the rest from 25 different other war agencies. 

 In short, the Smithsonian is serving as an important source of tech- 

 nical and geographic information. 



3. The Smithsonian, together with the National Research Council, 

 the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science 

 Research Council, has actively participated in the setting up of the 

 Ethnogeographic Board. The Institution furnishes financial sup- 

 port and facilities, and serves as the headquarters for the Board, 

 whose purpose is to provide a central clearinghouse for information 

 to Army and Navy Intelligence and other war agencies in the fields 

 of geography, languages, and social sciences. Dr. William Duncan 

 Strong, formerly of the Bureau of American Ethnology and now a 

 member of the staff of Columbia University, was appointed director 

 of the Board. Members of the staff of the Institution are cooperat- 

 ing closely in the work. 



