8 
Editorial. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm, 
^     January,  19 19. 
communication  "To  the  Pharmaceutical  Profession  of  America" 
such  a  communication  becomes  public  property  and  if  meritorious 
is  worthy  of  the  widest  dissemination.  When  an  individual  or  a 
group  of  individuals  announce  that  they  "  gave  information  concern- 
ing the  colleges  of  pharmacy  which  would  help  the  Committee  on 
Special  Training  to  determine  the  fitness  of  the  various  schools  to 
become  S.  A.  T.  C.  institutions,"  their  judgment  and  the  acts  shown 
by  their  own  statement  become  very  rightly  a  subject  for  the  con- 
sideration of  pharmacists  and  it  is  well  within  the  province  of 
pharmaceutical  journalism  to  discuss  such  an  event  and  within  the 
editorial  prerogative  to  criticize  the  acts  and  decisions  of  such  a  self 
styled  tribunal. 
The  editor  lays  no  claim  to  infallibility  of  judgment  nor  is  he 
willing  to  concede  the  claims  of  his  correspondents  to  such.  The 
pharmacists  of  this  country  are  entitled  to  know  the  real  facts  and 
when  the  purport  is  understood  their  decision  should  determine  the 
justness  of  our  criticism. 
The  difference  in  positions  is  briefly  this — the  plan  as  con- 
templated would  have  limited  the  training  of  pharmacists  for  the 
government  service  to  a  few  of  the  schools  having  membership  in 
th  American  Conference  of  Pharmaceutical  Faculties.  The  wisdom 
of  the  selection  made,  by  which  some  of  the  most  prominent  and 
best  equipped  schools  of  pharmacy  were  deliberately  ignored,  was 
properly  criticized.  The  selection  was  not  only  not  the  wisest  that 
could  have  been  made,  but  the  discrimination  manifested  bias  and 
was  unfair  and  not  sound  advice  either  for  the  best  interests  of  the 
nation  or  of  pharmacy.  Any  scheme  that  discriminates  between 
students  of  equal  calibre,  irrespective  of  whether  their  education 
was  obtained  in  a  university  school  or  one  not  so  affiliated,  is  an 
unamerican  exhibition  of  cast. 
Further  the  intended  scheme  would  have  debarred  the  thou- 
sands of  pharmacists  whose  patriotism  already  had  enrolled  them 
in  the  Army,  from  the  possibility  of  rendering  the  same  service  and 
receiving  the  same  consideration  as  to  ranking. 
At  the  best,  this  scene  was  exactly  as  designated  "  A  Quasi 
Recognition  of  Pharmacy  "  and  not  such  an  actual  recognition  of 
modern  educated  pharmacists  as  that  accorded,  by  virtue  of  Con- 
gressional enactments,  to  the  other  divisions  of  medicine  represented 
in  the  Army  Medical  Department,  and  certainly  not  comparable  with 
