USA > California > Alameda County > History of Alameda County, California. Volume I > Part 37
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To organize more thoroughly the staff of the College of Agriculture for war emergency activities, five sessions were held on June 15th and 16th, 1917. Committees were appointed and duties assigned to the various members. Projects of a temporary and less fundamental char- acter were eliminated from the research activities of the various de- partments to make room for war emergency investigations or agricul- tural extension work. About fifty new food production projects de- veloped by war necessities were started.
Professor Elwood Mead, authority on reclamation, was appointed chairman of the State Land Settlement Board, which acquired, pre- pared, and subdivided for settlement about six thousand four hundred acres of land at Durham, California. More than 1,000 acres were seeded, chiefly to wheat and barley. In addition to this contribution to the food supply of California, the project was a factor in providing homes for veterans after the war. Professor Mead was called to Wash- ington for a portion of his time to carry on this and other important reconstruction work.
Other war activities of the College of Agriculture included voca- tional agricultural instruction, home demonstration work, sanitation in military camps, fish investigations, grasshopper control, utilization of garbage, serum and vaccine inoculations, nitrogen fixation, sugar sub- stitutes investigations, irrigation assistance, and special short courses.
Faculty members served state and nation in multifarious ways. Thomas Forsyth Hunt, Professor of Agriculture, Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, and Dean of the College of Agri- culture, served as acting chairman of the Committee of Research and Food Supply of the State Council of Defense. The following men undertook farm advisor work during the war: J. E. Coit, Professor of Citriculture; J. W. Nelson, Assistant Professor of Soil Technology and member of the subcommittee on Occupational Selection of the Pacific Coast Research Conference; E. O. Essig, Assistant Professor
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of Entomology; R. W. Hodgson, Instructor in Citriculture. W. T. Horne, Associate Professor of Plant Pathology, took up the field study of certain diseases of deciduous fruits, of special importance in army rations. During the summer and autumn of 1917, W. B. Herms, Asso- ciate Professor of Parasitology, was almost continuously engaged in investigating the sanitation of the seventy-three camps of the Western Department of the United States Army, particularly with regard to mosquitoes and flies. This important work led to Prosser Herm's ap- pointment as Captain in the Sanitary Corps of the National Army. Woodbridge Metcalf, Assistant Professor of Forestry, gave much of his time to the study and prevention of methods of fire protection, while Walter Mulford, Professor of Forestry, served on the State Com- mittee of the Society of American Foresters in the interest of conserva- tion. Professor Vaile entered the Armenian and Syrian Relief Service. P. L. Lantz, Assistant in Agricultural Extension, entered the military service January 18, and died of pneumonia at San Diego on March 8, 1918. Elwood Mead, Professor of Rural Institutions, in addition to his work already mentioned on the Durham land settlement project, served the Department of the Interior as official advisor on reclamation projects embracing about half the states in the arid region. J. S. Burd, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry, was a member of the Board of Legal Advisors for Exemption District No. 2 of Berekeley. At least twenty members of the staff were granted war leave to enter the mil- itary service of the Government.
A great deal of space could be devoted to the war-time service of the various departments of the Medical School. At the suggestion of the Surgeon-General of the Army, Dr. T. W. Huntington, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery, made arrangements whereby selected groups of medical officers from the United States Army might be in- structed for a period of one month in the surgical treatment of frac- tures, wounds, and shock. The Department of Surgery began the or- ganization of Base Hospital Unit No. 30, and gave intensive instruc- tion to a considerable number of the enlisted personnel. More than fourteen members of the Department of Surgery went into the Govern- ment service.
An interesting feature of the war work of the Department of Path- ology and Bacteriology was the investigation of certain problems hav- ing a definite bearing on the health of troops, for example, the prepara- tion of "taurin," its fate on injection, and use in the treatment of tuber- culosis. These researches were prosecuted under grants from the State
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Council of Defense and the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research. During the autumn of 1917, Professor Gay was appointed alternate director of the "Metchnikoff," one of the four Pullman cars specially equipped by the American Red Cross for bacteriological laboratory purposes to be used in connection with outbreaks of infectious diseases in the national cantonments. The initial trip of this laboratory car was made to Kelly Field No. 1, San Antonio, Texas, Professor Gay in the meantime having been appointed major in the United States Medical Corps.
Perhaps one of the most important discoveries of the war was that of "tethelin," the growth-controlling substance from the anterior lobe of the pituitary body, which was found to be of value in stimulating the healing of otherwise slowly healing wounds. This substance was dis- covered by Dr. T. Brailsford Robertson, Professor of Bio-chemistry. research which led to this discovery involved over seven thousand weighings of animals treated with tethelin, together with some thirty thousand weighings of control animals or of animals receiving other substances suspected of exerting action upon the growth of tissues. The statistical handling of these figures was an onerous task, while even the feeding and care of so many animals entailed great labor and expense.
Another phase of research having strong bearing upon the war was the thorough investigation by Dr. E. S. Sundstroem, instructor in bio-chemistry, of the effects of high altitudes on metabolism. Three years of study on this question led him to the conclusion that mountain sickness, assumed to be akin to aviation sickness, was due to an alka- losis, or increase in the alkalinity of the blood, which the body combats by an accelerated excretion of alkaline bases.
The success of the University's policy of cooperation with state and national agencies in war work would have been impossible without the cooperation and zeal of the members of the various administrative de- partments. In this respect the work of the advisory committee of deans might be mentioned. This was an executive body appointed by Presi- dent Wheeler to aid him in handling the ever increasing quantity of war work which the University was continually called upon to take. The members were Charles Mills Gayley, Professor of the English Lan- guage and Literature and Dean of the Faculties; Henry Morse Stephens, Sather Professor of History, and Dean of the College of Letters and Science, and William Carey Jones, Director of the School of Jurisprudence and Dean of the Graduate Division.
Many of the courses included in the curriculum both of the Uni-
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versity and the Extension Division were offered in recognition of the important rôle played by the civilian population in modern warfare. To acquaint the public with foreign politics and the significance of international relations, lecture courses were given on current events at the campus and in Bay cities. During the summer months of 1918, two war sessions were held with five definite schools, occupying twelve weeks of intensive training : (1) School for Training of Reconstruction Aides; (2) School of Nursing; (3) School for Social Workers; (4) School for Stenographers; (5) Course for Laboratory Technicians. Other war courses included the following subjects: "Europe Since 1815," "French Civilization," "Government of Germany and Prussia," "History of American Diplomatic Relations," "Political Development of Modern Russia," "Principles of Individual and National Conduct." Under the direction of Ira B. Cross, Associate Professor of Economics on the Flood Foundation, a school of employment management was in- stituted. The purpose of the school was to instruct employers of labor to keep the men content by a spirit of cooperation and mutual confidence between worker and director, thereby diminishing the loss entailed by the prevalent turn-over of labor.
The foregoing account of the services of the various departments of the State University during the war period is by no means an ex- haustive catalogue of the wide range of activities in which it cooper- ated with the state and Federal governments. Limitations of space preclude a more exhaustive treatment, however, and the writer must pass on to the direct military contribution of the University. This account must be still more inadequate, for several volumes would be required to describe the deeds of all members of the faculty, student body, and alumni, who responded in one way or another to the country's call.
A total of 4,087 graduates, students, and faculty of the University of California entered the service of the United States during the war, according to the honor roll compiled by the Alumni Association in March, 1919, and exhibited at the Charter Day celebration of that year. Of that number, at least 55 per cent were commissioned with the rank of lieutenant or higher. This fact was held at the time to be an indica- tion of the value of a college sheepskin in war time. Of the 4,078 in service, 13 per cent held warrants as non-commissioned officers and 32 per cent were privates. Separation of the different branches of the service showed the same proportion. In the marines, 59 per cent of those who were once in the student body were commissioned; in the
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army, 55 per cent and in the navy 54 per cent. The 1918 class gave 583 to the total number of commissioned personnel and the 1917 class gave 577. One out of each three men registered in the University volunteered for service with the forces and 113 members of the faculty answered the call to the Colors.
The army was by far the most popular branch of the service, draw- ing 82 per cent of the men. Only 16 per cent joined the navy and but 2 per cent the marines. The men in the navy and marines were recruited from the younger men of the last ten classes. Of the thousand who served, only ninety-eight men and one woman lost their lives in com- bat or from disease. The woman who made the supreme sacrifice was Edith White, '07, who died in France ten days after landing to direct a Red Cross Canteen. In all, thirty-seven California women served over- seas. They worked in various capacities, with the Red Cross, in base hospitals, and with the various relief commissions in France and Bel- gium. Mable W. Farrington, 1912, was engaged in relief work in Turkey and Armenia; Mrs. Alice Marchebout Dickson, class of 1897, served as chairman of the American Relief Commission in London.
At least sixty-one University men had been wounded, according to an incomplete list compiled by the Alumni Association by June, 1917. These included graduates of classes as early as 1897. Many of the wounds were accounted for by the action of the Ninety-first Division, largely officered by California men, which, as pointed out elsewhere in this history, played such a conspicuous part in the Battle of the Ar- gonne.
Six countries awarded decorations to Californians who served in various capacities and places during the war. Fourteen of these men were recipients of two decorations; one received six. The most prized decoration, the Distinguished Service Cross, awarded for conspicuous bravery, was given to eleven men. Three others received the Distin- guished Service Medal, given for highly valuable services. Other dec- orations and honors awarded were :- France; Legion of Honor, seven; Croix de Guerre, thirty-six; Médale Santé, one ; Belgium :- Order of the Crown, nine; Order of the Cross, five; British decorations, three; Italian decorations, five; Serbian, one.
Space does not permit an account of the valuable service of more than one hundred and twenty-five members of the faculty who served the Government in various capacities. Prof. David Prescott Barrows of the Political Science Department, later president of the University, was the recipient of no less than six decorations from foreign govern-
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ments for his work in 1916 as a member of the Commission for Relief in Belgium and in recognition of his service as Lieutenant-Colonel of Cavalry during 1917, 1918 and 1919 while on active duty with the American Expeditionary Forces in the Philippine Islands and in Si- beria. In Belgium, under Herbert Hoover, Dr. Barrows directed the food supply of greater Brussels and was decorated with the Belgian Order of the Crown by King Albert. For his service in Siberia he re- ceived the Czechoslovakian Croix de Guerre, the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure, the Italian Order of the Crown. He was also made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French Government and a Commander of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the Polish Govern- ment.
Lieutenant-Colonel Barrows accompanied the Twenty-seventh In- fantry, the first American detachment sent to Siberia, to Vladivostok in March, 1918, serving on the staff of Maj .- Gen. William Graves. Colonel Barrows was detailed to organize an intelligence detachment and picked fifty men speaking sixteen different languages for his work. He then selected twenty-five engineers and twenty-five members of the Signal Corps. At this time the American forces, numbering 2,000 men, were operating with Japanese troops for the relief of 40,000 Czecho- slovakian soldiers who had been trapped by the Bolsheviki and were cut off from Lake Baikal, in Central Siberia. The Japanese forces, sup- ported by the American, were finally instrumental in liberating the Czechs. During this campaign Colonel Barrows frequently exposed himself to death at the hands of the Bolsheviki. He returned to the United States in the spring of 1919, arriving in Berkeley on April 16th, and later in the year succeeded Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler as President of the University.
Warren C. Gregory, class of 1887, member of the Board of Re- gents of the University, and prominent lawyer, served on the Belgian Relief Commission. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor of France and an Officer of the Belgian Order of the Crown.
Paul Cadman, class of 1915, later Associate Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of Men, while a Captain in the American Expedi- tionary Forces, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre because of his work at St. Mihiel in obtaining information regarding the position of the enemy.
The University of California sent several sections of its ambulance unit to France beginning as early as May, 1917. Of these, Section 586, which returned in March, 1919, after eighteen months' service, en-
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joyed the distinction of having had thirteen members decorated with the French Croix de Guerre, while the entire unit was cited for bravery in action on the Verdun sector.
Campus life during the war reflected the unusual condition through- out the rest of the country. For example, the 1918 Senior Class decided to have a simple Commencement program in deference to the efforts being made everywhere to avoid waste and extravagance. The tradi- tional "Senior Pilgrimage" was made without the customary wearing of straw hats by the men; no dinners were held before the Senior ball, and printed instead of engraved invitations were used for the ball. Reg- istration figures for the Spring semester on January 14, 1918, showed an enrollment of 1,000 fewer men students than in previous years, the senior and junior classes being the hardest hit by the war. The enroll- ment of women students was about the same as in peace time.
The year 1919 was marked by three losses to the University not di- rectly attributable to the war, but which should be mentioned because they occurred during the period when the campus was just beginning to resume its normal condition. Undoubtedly a great spiritual loss was sustained by the University in the resignation of its beloved president, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, on July 15, 1919, after approximately twenty years of service. During this period Dr. Wheeler had not only wit- nessed, but himself contributed to the amazing growth of the institu- tion. Coming to the University as a young man in 1899, he had been instrumental in building a large physical plant which turned out thou- sands instead of hundreds of graduates every year. More important than this, however, was his nobility of character and instinct of sound scholarship, both of which were reflected in the high ideals which he constantly held before the students.
In the spring of the same year the University also lost two great friends, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who from 1897 until her death at her home in Pleasanton in April, 1919, had been the only woman member of the Board of Regents, and Henry Morse Stephens, dean of the Uni- versity and professor of history for many years. Mrs. Hearst was prob- ably the greatest benefactress the University ever had, giving liberally for buildings of the great fortune left her by her husband. Henry Morse Stephens, to whose memory the students of the University sev- eral years after his death reared a building which serves as headquar- ters for all non-academic campus activities, had long been styled lov- ingly "the students' friend." For many years Professor Stephens con- sidered it his personal privilege to welcome the incoming classes in the
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Greek theatre and to bid Godspeed to the graduates on the steps of historic South Hall. The Bancroft Library is perhaps his best monu- ment, for it was due to his efforts that the legislature was persuaded to make the necessary appropriation of some $1,500,000. Both Professor Stephens and his associate, Dr. Herbert Bolton, acted as magnets to draw students from all sections of the nation to study early California and Pacific Coast history.
The end of the year 1919 witnessed the restoration of something like pre-war conditions on the campus and reconstruction proceeded under the able presidency of David Prescott Barrows. Those students who had survived the combat into which they had thrown themselves with such laudable enthusiasm put aside military habiliments and re- turned to their books. Of these brave sons of California, it might well be said, as James Russell Lowell, in his "Commemoration Ode," in July, 1865, said of Harvard boys who had shouldered arms in defence of the Northern cause in the Civil War :
"To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good :- "
WELCOME TO THE PACIFIC FLEET
On September 4, 1919, the entire county united in an enthusiastic welcome to the officers and men of the Pacific Fleet at Oakland. Ala- meda, Berkeley, San Leandro, Hayward, and all the lesser towns and communities joined with Oakland in celebrating the historical occasion of the coming of the Pacific Fleet to its permanent station on the West Coast.
On this proud day the East Bay was host not only to Admiral Hugh Rodman and the officers and men of the huge armada, but also to Sec- retary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. The outstanding event of the celebration was the proferred free tender to the United States Govern- ment of the proposed $10,000,000 site for a naval base at Alameda. The offer was made to Secretary Daniels by Joseph E. Caine, manager of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. The site was pronounced a mag- nificent one by Daniels, who was non-committal, however, as to how favorable were Alameda's chances as compared with those of Richmond and Hunter's Point for receiving the much-coveted prize.
At the Bethlehem shipyards the secretary drove the first rivet in the
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keel of a 12,000 ton oil tanker. There, also, he addressed several thou- sand mechanics, telling them that the part of a shipyard employe during the war was equally as important as that of a soldier in the front line.
The secretary and his party were next feted at Neptune Beach, where Daniels was presented with a gold key by the citizens of Ala- meda. He also made a brief address there.
Following luncheon at the Hotel Oakland, the secretary was taken to Berkeley, where he delivered an address at the Greek theatre, the es- sence of which was an appeal to the scholars of the Nation to defend the Covenant made at Versailles. A dinner at the Hotel Oakland sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, and a brilliant ball at the Auditorium in the evening, completed the program.
Throughout both day and evening, for the enlisted men, of whom several thousand visited the East Bay, there was equally unstinted hos- pitality. Theaters threw their doors open to the sailors, there was a regatta on Lake Merritt, and the men were entertained with a pro- gram ranging from boxing bouts and an illuminated parade with fire- works to dancing on the city's streets.
VISIT OF PRESIDENT WILSON
The visit of President and Mrs. Wilson to Alameda County on Sep- tember 18, 1919, during the president's speechmaking tour in defense of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, will always be remembered as one of great patriotic demonstrations of the World war period. The return of the One Hundred and Forty-third Field Artillery and the One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Infantry had been attended by crowded streets and enthusiastic welcomes, but even those celebrations paled into insignificance beside the tremendous ovation accorded by Oakland and Berkeley to the most commanding figure in the world at that time.
The President and Mrs. Wilson were first greeted upon their ar- rival from San Francisco by flag and bunting bedecked shipyards as the steamer Encinal proceeded up the Estuary. The progress of the presidential party was marked by a deafening salute of sirens, whistles, and the applause of shipworkers who thronged every vantage point in the Moore yards. The President came from San Francisco early in the afternoon. In that city he had been entertained with true western hos- pitality.
Broadway was a surging mass of spectators, the school children in
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the front ranks, when the presidential car made its triumphant progress through Oakland to Berkeley, where the Chief Executive was wel- comed by the University students and faculty in the Greek theatre. Before a concourse that crowded the open air theatre the President urged the students to think for themselves. Dean William Carey Jones presided and introduced Mayor Louis Bartlett, who welcomed Wood- row Wilson to Berkeley. Although the program had not called for an address, the President took the hint that a few words were expected and spoke to the students as one college man to another. Recalling his professorial days at Princeton, the Chief Magistrate urged the stu- dents to make the thought and opinion of America's college youth a force for the control of public affairs. European students, he re- minded them, had often kept statesmen on the anxious seat through the sheer force of their disapproval.
At the Oakland Municipal Auditorium that evening, after a short rest and dinner at the Hotel Oakland, the president made a stirring ad- dress in defense of the League of Nations and in favor of the ratifica- tion of the Treaty of Versailles by the Senate of the United States, the primary object of his tour. When the president arrived on the platform at 8:05 o'clock the eagerness of the crowd to hear him was held in abeyance, according to a newspaper account "during the fifteen min- utes devoted to an ear-splitting, lung-straining ovation which set the echoes reverberating in the steel-raftered structure."
Four successive salvos of applause greeted the president before Dr. Aurelia H. Rinehardt, president of Mills College, chairman of the evening, silenced the crowd with out-turned hands and introduced as "Commander in Chief of our victorious Army" the man to hear whom 12,000 persons had filled the auditorium.
In his address, which was received with close attention, the president dwelt on the points with which history will always identify him in that last plea for the triumph of the ideals the advocacy of which was to send him perhaps prematurely to the grave.
He feared that the people of the Nation had been misled as to the real object of the covenant, he said. He pointed out that the Treaty of Versailles, to which the Senate opposition objected, provided not so much for the settlement of Germany as for the settlement of the world, that it provided a covenant for a League of Nations, "which is intended to operate as a partnership, a permanent partnership of the great free, self-governing peoples of the world, to stand sponsor for the right and for civilization."
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