REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 9 



SPECIAL WARTIME ACTIVITIES 



Technical information to armed forces. — Probably the Institution's 

 most useful wartime function has been to furnish technical informa- 

 tion requested by the Army, Navy, and war agencies. During the first 

 years of the war information was urgently needed on the geography, 

 peoples, disease-bearing insects and other animals, and other features 

 of many little-known war areas, particularly in the Pacific theater. 

 As many members of the Institution's scientific staff had visited or 

 studied these regions, they were called upon with increasing frequency 

 to furnish such information. Records kept by the Smithsonian War 

 Committee showed more than 2,000 such requests during the first 2 

 years of war. As the Pacific war moved westward, however, first- 

 hand information became available to the Army and Navy, and calls 

 upon the Institution's staff during the past year began to diminish, al- 

 though several staff members continued to be in almost continuous 

 conference with Army and Navy officials. 



Ethno geographic Board. — The same sequence of events occurred in 

 the case of the Ethnogeographic Board, a nongovernmental agency 

 created cooperatively by the Smithsonian Institution, the National 

 Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the 

 Social Science Research Council, to act as a clearinghouse for anthropo- 

 logical and geographic information needed by the Army and Navy. 

 During the earlier stages of the war the Board was called upon con- 

 tinually for information, reports, and assistance, and its very ex- 

 tensive file of American experts in many branches of science was in 

 constant use. Around July 1, 1944, however, the need for such service 

 began to taper off, and Dr. William Duncan Strong, the Director, re- 

 turned to Columbia University to resume his duties as professor of 

 anthropology. The Board was kept in operation under the direction 

 of Dr. Henry B. Collins, Jr., of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 who had assisted Dr. Strong from the beginning. Its services were 

 in demand, though to a lesser extent, throughout the year. 



Improvement of cultural relations with the other American re- 

 publics. — A wartime service which the Institution was unusually well 

 fitted to take part in was the Government's program for the improve- 

 ment and extension of cultural relations with the other American re- 

 publics. A number of projects in this field were undertaken soon 

 after the beginning of the war, and these have been carried forward 

 during the past year. The monumental Handbook of South American 

 Indians, of which 50 percent of the authors are scientists of the other 

 American republics, progressed satisfactorily under the continued 

 guidance of Dr. Julian H. Steward. Volumes 1 and 2 were in proof, 

 and volumes 3 and 4 went to the printer toward the close of the year. 

 The manuscript of the fifth and last volume was expected to be com- 



