2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
accorded to me by the staff of the Institution, and to bespeak for my 
successor and for the Institution their continued loyalty and devoted 
service. 
WARTIME ACTIVITIES OF THE INSTITUTION 
During another full year of war, the Institution again utilized its 
capabilities to the fullest extent in aiding the Army and Navy and the 
various war agencies. Its normal peacetime research and exploration 
program was largely abandoned except for those projects designed 
to promote better cultural relations with the other American re- 
publics, and its publications were restricted almost entirely to papers 
having a bearing on the war or on the other Americas. To visitors 
to the Institution, these changes would not be apparent, as its visible 
features—museums and art galleries—have continued to operate on 
full schedule. In fact, hours of opening have been expanded to in- 
clude Sundays for the benefit of the large numbers of service per- 
sonnel stationed around Washington and passing through. But the 
time of the staff—aside from necessary curatorial work and the 
recording of observations the cessation of which would result in gaps 
in the scientific record—has been devoted largely to furnishing tech- 
nical information and assistance urgently needed by Army, Navy, 
and war agencies. 
Strategic information to Army and Navy. ace scientific staff of 
the Institution and its branches includes specialists in many branches 
of biology, geology, anthropology, astrophysics, engineering, and 
technology, and these scientists have been called upon constantly since 
Pearl Harbor to answer questions confronting Army and Navy 
officials. The present war, covering as it does widely scattered 
regions of the earth, many of them little known to Americans, has 
required the assembling of large amounts of data on the peoples, 
geography, disease-harboring insects, animals and plants, and other 
features of these far-flung regions. The Smithsonian Institution has 
been able to furnish, both directly and through the Ethnogeographic 
Board, described below, replies to hundreds of urgent questions of this 
nature, and some staff members have been in almost constant con- 
sultation with Army and Navy officials. Furthermore, a number of 
war-connected research projects have been assigned to the Institution, 
and its laboratory facilities have been utilized from time to time for 
Army and Navy investigations. 
Ethnogeographic Board.—As stated in my last report, the Ethno- 
geographic Board is a nongovernmental agency, set up jointly by 
the Smithsonian Institution, the National Research Council, the 
American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Re- 
search Council, to serve as a clearinghouse between the Army, Navy, 
