170 W. CROSS GEOLOGY IN THE AVORLD WAR AND AFTER 



general line of entrenched field positions from the channel to the Swiss 

 frontier was established before any system of utilizing this line of expert 

 assistance was provided. The discussion of this subject in German liter- 

 ature shows how the matter was taken up in that army. The organization 

 of geological work in the British, French, Belgian, Italian, and American 

 armies has not been publicly discussed, and I can make at this time only 

 very general statements concerning #iem. 



The German general staff recognized quickly that the position warfare 

 into which they had been so unexpectedly forced required a development 

 of geological service such as Captain Kranz had outlined the year before. 

 From among the large number of professional geologists in the reserve 

 and other branches of the army a few were first assigned to work on 

 certain problems. Later the work was systematized and expanded, and 

 it is known that at the end of the war each army possessed a corps of geol- 

 ogists of several ranks upon which calls could be made for expert advice. 

 Perhaps 75 or 100 men were thus employed in the German armies on the 

 western front. They were responsible only for advice and plans, not for 

 execution. 



In the British army a small advisory corps of geologists was early estab- 

 lished, and it is interesting to note that it was under the leadership of the 

 well-known Australian geologist. Prof. Edgeworth David, of Antarctic 

 fame, professor at the University of Sydney, New South Wales, now com- 

 missioned as a major. He has been aided by Captain W. B. E. King, from 

 the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and Lieutenant Loftus Hills, of 

 the Geological Survey of Tasmania. The Mining Division of the British 

 army includes a large number of men who have been trained in geology, 

 but are professionally mining engineers. 



The Belgian and French armies have apparently had no particularly 

 organized geological force — a situation which it is difficult to understand, 

 but which may be due, not improbably, to the early drafting of active 

 geologists into the army for routine military duty and to ensuing heavy 

 losses in the first terrible months of the war. The French and Belgian 

 geological maps of the battle zone certainly contained information which 

 must have been of much value to all the armies on this front. 



The American Expeditionary Force has had the advantage of possessing 

 in its Engineer Corps at general headquarters one of the most broadly 

 trained American geologists, Alfred H. Brooks, of the Geological Survey, 

 who was at first commissioned as a captain and at present holds the rank 

 of lieutenant-colonel. Under his supervision there has developed a small 

 force of geologists, all of whom were, I believe, transferred to this work 

 from various other arms of the service. The first assistance to Major 



