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The Joint Committee cooperated with the Ethnogeographic Board 

 without losing its independence. It initiated the pattern of committees 

 of the three Councils, and showed the practicality of uniting disciplines 

 by their area interests. Its Government experiment served as a warn- 

 ing to the Board that proffered advice, be it ever so sound, is seldom 

 accepted or appreciated, and leads to suspicion and resentment not 

 only from the receivers, but also from the professional colleagues of 

 the advisory body. 



Intensive Language Program 



The American Council of Learned Societies, since it represents the 

 humanities, has a natural interest in language and literature, both area 

 subjects. The Council has long supported such regional committees 

 as those on Chinese, Japanese, Indie and Iranian, Near Eastern, 

 Arabic and. Islamic, and Slavic studies. The Intensive Language Pro- 

 gram was directed toward the intensive teaching of many languages 

 in anticipation of a real Government need. University programs were 

 organized for teaching officers of the armed forces such languages as 

 Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Malayan, Burmese, Thai, and Swahili. 

 The great success of this program forms one of the outstanding 

 achievements of scholarly efforts in wartime. 



The existence of the Intensive Language Program allowed the 

 Ethnogeographic Board to concentrate on the geographical and cul- 

 tural aspects of area and to transfer language questions to its collab- 

 orator. Thi'; was more than just a practical working arrangement 

 which developed with time. The complementary relationship of the 

 two programs was clearly considered at a meeting in March 1942, 

 before the Board was actually established. 



Committee on the Anthropology of Oceania 



In January 1942 a group of anthropologists interested in Oceania, 

 inspired by the Committee on Latin American Anthropology and 

 fully cognizant of an opportunity to be of service to the war, estab- 

 lished a committee of the National Research Council. This group 

 was aware of the need for integrated studies of world areas, and 

 their application to the National Research Council actually requested 

 that a special committee on anthropological areas be established, with 

 an immediate subcommittee on Oceania. The over-all committee was 

 not accepted at this time, but the idea was fermenting. 



The Oceania committee immediately started a personnel file. This 

 was not modeled on the Latin American committee's limited and highly 



