CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOLOGY 209 



and no geological organization in the army was affected. 



America entered the war late, and while she thus had a 

 smaller space of time in which to develop a geological service 

 in her armies, she had on the other hand the advantages of 

 long time for preparation and a well-equipped geological sur- 

 vey upon which to draw for men and material. Frankness 

 compels one to say that she did not profit fully from these ad- 

 vantages. The criminal stupidity which brought us unpre- 

 pared into a war which had been threatening us for many long 

 months, necessarily had its deplorable consequences in every 

 branch of the service. A million men might spring to arms 

 over night, but when they got done springing they found there 

 were no arms to spring to. In the months of feverish prepara- 

 tion which followed it could not be expected that among the 

 thousands of things to be done proper provision would be made 

 for an adequate military geological service. That could only 

 come with time. 



American energy, however, in some measure, compensated 

 for our other shortcomings. The first contingent of officers 

 which arrived in France to prepare for the coming armies sent 

 back word that geologists were needed. Before the Armistice 

 was declared America ranked next to Great Britain among the 

 Western Allies in respect to the excellence of the geological 

 service attached to its armies at the front, and was rapidly ad- 

 vancing to a leading position. Nine geologists were at that 

 time attached to our field forces, and more had been summoned 

 for service. 



Under the able direction of Lieut. Col. Alfred H. Brooks, 

 the American geologists took up the task of supplying our 

 armies with much the same material and information as have 

 already been described in earlier pages relating to the work 

 of the British geologists. Geological maps, based in part on 

 earlier French reports and in part on new observations, were 

 carefully prepared and beautifully printed in colors. The 

 accompanying descriptions of formations were not the technical 

 and purely scientific accounts common to ordinary geological 



