352 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE 



relations. Fortunately alike for the science of psychology 

 and the army, the practical work which is to be described in 

 these chapters over-rode the disadvantages of its name and 

 ultimately converted psychology into a word to conjure with 

 in the United States Army. 



There probably were few greater surprises in the war than 

 the conspicuously important service of psychology. Aside 

 from the few who were professionally engaged in the subject 

 no one thought of the study of mental life as having any pos- 

 sible practical bearing on the problems of war. The writer 

 well remembers listening to General Squier present before a 

 meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington 

 in the spring of 1917 the necessity for the study of problems 

 of military clothing. Among the many problems whose so- 

 lution, in his judgment, would favorably affect the efficiency 

 of our army there were several which the writer recognized as 

 primarily psychological. It happens that neither the War 

 Department nor the scientists of the country, through their 

 instrument of organization, the National Research Council, 

 succeeded in getting around to any of these problems, but had 

 time sufficed and opportunity for such work appeared, psycholo- 

 gists would have cooperated with physiologists, and chemists 

 and physicists, in the careful determination of kind and quality 

 of materials to be used, most serviceable, sightly, and comfort- 

 able style and cut, and numerous other special characteristics 

 of the assemblage of garments which constitute the soldier's 

 outfit of clothing. 



The National Research Council had made only small head- 

 way toward the solution of military problems before it met 

 certain definite needs which called for the psychological ex- 

 pert. As a result a committee for psychology was organized 

 and from that hour the psychologists of the country worked 

 side by side with investigators representing the medical sciences, 

 various branches of biology, anthropology, geology and 

 geography, physics, chemistry and engineering. Throughout 

 this large and heterogeneous group of investigators there ex- 



