8o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I07 



materials is needed before intelligent action on the over-all problem 

 can be recommended. 



The Board wanted to initiate this extensive survey by employing 

 some individual for a preliminary period of some 3 months. Several 

 offers were considered, and one individual was actually assigned to 

 the job. However, before he really began work he was taken into the 

 State Department on a more permanent assignment. The Board then 

 assigned Homer Barnett to survey the documents which concerned 

 the Pacific area. This work, initiated late in 1945, is one of the con- 

 tinuing commitments of the Board. It has the advantage of uniting 

 the War Document Survey and the temporarily abandoned Pacific 

 Survey Project to be described later. 



History of the Ethnogeographic Board 



The present analytical account of the Ethnogeographic Board 

 should be listed as a project, although one which needs little elabora- 

 tion. At the fourth meeting of the Board in March 1944 the members 

 discussed the desirability of an account which might guide the estab- 

 lishment of a similar organization in a future emergency. This pro- 

 posal was accepted enthusiastically by the Sponsors who enlarged 

 the concept of what such a history would cover. The Board debated 

 at length the selection of an historian. The stafif members felt too 

 deeply invoked to be objective about the Ethnogeographic Board. 

 A person previously unfamiliar with the Board would have objectivity 

 but might be overwhelmed by detail, meaningless if the framework 

 were not appreciated. Whether the selection of a Board member 

 solved the difficulties, remains an open question. 



Participation 



Besides its own projects, the Board participated in a number of 

 others, some of which have already been mentioned in other sections. 

 The Board assisted in the preparation of the manual "Jungle and 

 Desert Emergencies," which the Air Corps places in all emergency 

 kits. The Quartermaster General's Office worked with the Board on a 

 "Reconnaissance Report on Concentrated Rations of Primitive Peo- 

 ples." The Board cooperated with the American Council of Learned 

 Societies on a program for training personnel in the Russian language. 

 There are many others in which the Board played a minor role. 



General 



An over-all evaluation of these projects can be little more than a 

 summation of opinion about each individual one. The merits of a 



