World War II: The George Washington University in Wartime - Address by President Marvin

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AN ADDRESS TO THE ROTARY CLUB OF WASHINGTON

January 24, 1945

Mr. President of Rotary, Mr. Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and Gentlemen of Rotary:

You have graciously asked me to talk of the University in war times. In doing so I have the concern that an etcher might have, who, accustomed to working with a fine engraving tool, is called upon to portray a picture in bold charcoal lines. Had I not been a Rotarian for several years, had I not known of your membership's deep interest in education, I should be hesitant about presenting the sketch of the University which must be confined to the few minutes allotted me.

For all universities, the war years have been years of continuous and intense activity. For The George Washington University, a new type of student body has come into existence. Courses of study have had to be changed; budgets have had to be modified; some activities have had to be dropped; new activities have had to be undertaken - all these things have had to be done that the University might aid as much as possible in the prosecution of the war, -- until final victory is won, a victory that will insure principles of political freedom and human liberty.

It is our university hope, and more, it is our university faith, that peace will bring an organization of the nations of the world which will make possible a new, prosperous era in which great and small peoples shall have full opportunity for self development and well-earned happiness.

In the early 30's, when the war clouds were first apparent on the horizon, many persons were deeply concerned about student pacifism. We talked glibly about the irresponsibility of students and of their moral softness. Perhaps we had concern for we thought of them as emulating the social oddities of the oldsters of the teeming 20s. But when the trumpets of the four winds of earth blew battle, these same students eagerly stepped forward to be counted. From every classroom and laboratory "our finest" found places in the Armed Forces. The George Washington University students were no exception. As the University's able chairman has already told you, in 1942 the University had an enrollment of over 11,000. Perhaps more than 65 per cent of this number were men students. Approximately 45 per cent of this enrollment were carrying full-time work. This year we have an enrollment of about 9,000 students, but the full-time men students have gone to war and our student body has been reformed; to illustrate, our student body officers are largely full-time women students.

But, The George Washington University has been fortunate. Many of our sister institutions have lost 90 per cent or more of their enrollment. Our good fortune is largely due to being located in the nation's capital. Because of the changes in our student body, we have been compelled to drop classes in some fields, such as classical Greek and English poetry. We have had to strengthen many others, especially in the fields of physics, chemistry, engineering, business administration, and government.

In our liberal arts colleges we have reorganized our offerings on what is a three term or trimester basis. We have done this to accelerate the students' possibility of attainment. I am often asked if the acceleration plan will continue after the war. It is unlikely. Students and faculty members feel the strain. We must not forget that law of nature which deals with adjustment and recuperation in a fallow period. We learn to skate in summer and to swim in winter.

In the School of Law, if there be any merit in size, we have the largest enrollment of any of the accredited law schools of the nation. Last year we enrolled 350 students. Not a few of our most outstanding law schools have more members on their faculties than in their student bodies.

Our Medical School was the first to be used by the Armed Forces for the training of field medical men. Here, instead of a drop in enrollment we have had an increase. We were asked to carry a larger enrollment and to carry the students so enrolled on an accelerated basis. Our medical students study twelve months in the year, thus completing their course in three years in place of four.

In the School of Pharmacy we have developed a special staff to carry on teaching and research. The teaching is especially applicable to war needs.

Our courses in the School of Government, in accounting, in business organization, in political practices, in administration, have all had to be revamped to meet governmental needs. In the courses covering these fields of study there has been an increase in enrollment.

In the School of Engineering the Selective Service permitted all students with two years of college work behind them to complete their four years of study. Such students have to carry on their work in winter and summer terms.

When war came the number of students enrolled in engineering schools throughout the country was not large enough to meet the technical needs of our government. So it came about that in another field, The George Washington University was called upon to work out a new plan whereby men and women could be prepared for technical services. This plan, formulated with the Office of Education, was, ¬with some modification, ultimately adopted by all engineering colleges. New and various types of classes in which practical work was offered were set up. Among these were such courses as the Techniques of Frequency Modulation and Television, Essentials of Airplane Performance, and Photoelasticity. The University has had to recruit over 1,000 well-trained supervisors and lecturers to lead such student groups. In them we have trained some 13,500 men and women for the tasks to which they would be assigned by the government. This specialized and numerous group of students of the University has not been counted in the regular enrollment.

From our regularly enrolled students and from our alumni of Selective Service age, we have sent nearly 7,000 into the Armed Forces. One of my most trying tasks in these war days has been to grasp the hands of your sons and daughters as they have come through my office for a "Good-by" and a "God bless you". In these latter months the task of saying good-by has become even more trying, as it recalls all too vividly the ever-growing list of those who will not return, and that of those who have already come back to us, blind, and halt, and maimed. Approximately 7,000 have gone and still they go, clear-eyed but prematurely aged at eighteen years. The freedom of youth is not for them.

Eagerly, but with a wistfulness, they go to take their places on our ships on the sea and under it. They go to our ships of the air. They go to our armed land monsters, and they go to urge their feet to carry them into sand, and mud, among mangled bodies, into the hell of battle. I cannot help but say now, and I know each of you will join with me in the prayer, "God bless them and give them understanding."

With Pearl Harbor the Board of Trustees of The George Washington University, at a special meeting, discussed how the University could best serve the war effort. The faculty met to make a like decision. The Armed Forces were calling upon colleges to train men in the ways of the Army and the Navy and the Coast Guard. With our lack of dormitories and gymnasium facilities our problem was not an easy one. Then, too, we were differently situated. We were located in the nation's capital. Someone needed to help train those in the government who were to support the men in the Armed Forces. And so it was ultimately determined that we could carry on best through the maintenance and increase of our technical services, This the University did, and more. It may now be mentioned with propriety that our decision led us to undertake vital and secret experimental projects. It is apparent that for purposes of security very little can be mentioned, but to the laboratories of The George Washington University was given the task of developing the physics that aided in making possible an important war machine.

We undertook to train the dieticians that the Navy would need for its hospitals. In our home economics laboratories we have the only school of its type, for training in dietetics, in this nation. For the Army we undertook to measure the results of all of its training programs in the languages, as offered by the various colleges and universities throughout this country. This was not an easy task, as the Army had to know, and know almost at once the results from approximately 500 institutions.

We undertook to assemble the printed information upon certain biological fields for the Quartermaster Corps, that the specialists in that corps might have abstracts for their use in writing purchasing specifications. Under contract we have undertaken rather extensive studies on certain medical problems, to the end that the finest medical record of any army and for all time might possibly be bettered. Again, under contract we have done some extensive work on items for ordnance, both in the development of new ones - and in the improvement of old ones. Again, a considerable amount of work has also been done on the preservation of clothing, leather goods and packaging materials. I wish I might tell you more of the details of these vital projects, but, as the Chairman of our Board has already said in his fine introductory remarks, what has been accomplished in these laboratories as yet is considered a military secret.

To do these things we have had to call together hundreds of skilled scientists, to develop extensive laboratories, to be accountable for millions of dollars worth of government property, and to spend millions of dollars in the execution of the work. The Board of Trustees, thus, has accepted a very real war responsibility, and a vital one. The University men have worked without respite to be true to the trust given them. I am proud of the war record of the members of our Board and of our staff. To them goes all credit. We have had to give up most of our extra-curricular activities, - our athletics, our special student clubs. This has not been easy for the administration or for the students. I said it has not been easy for the students. There is a time in the life of the "young animal" when it should play. This is a biological law. If this play instinct is thwarted, there may come into existence a psychotic behavior. Youth must be for some cause. If youth cannot be for some organization or for some team, it is left concerned and often revengeful. Those of us who are oldsters and who have disciplined ourselves to the disappointments and rigors of life find it difficult enough to live under the demands of war. Youth finds it more difficult. Hence the problem arises of how to lead the youth's spirit without the means that have ordinarily developed it. I am here to testify to you of the fine, eager strength of the young people who are left behind, and of their own appreciation of this very problem.

This is one of the reasons why I have asked our student leaders to organize specialized groups to sit with the President and with members of the faculty to discuss many of our University's post-war problems. But that is another story. Already, I have mentioned to you the returning of our boys who have been in the service. Their return brings many problems to the University. We have set up a special plan for them. The Veterans Bureau has assigned to us more than 130 under Public Laws 16 and 346. We have in the University an Educational Director who cares for the needs of these men. We have set up an office for psychological and vocational advisement in which we have available a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a vocational counselor, and a physician. To this office students may go to be advised on how to readjust their thinking to meet modern life and how to find their way into commercial, educational, or other vocational fields. This office and its services are not restricted to University students. It is open to all veterans of this war.

We do not set our veterans apart from our regular student program. They do not want to be set apart. Yet in many instances it is difficult for them to meet, at once, normal competitive standards. It is the University's task to carefully guide and support them, until they have the strength or have made the physical, emotional, and moral adaptations necessary. In the Service, men are not personally responsible for their lives. They are a part of a great and directed mass action. As they return, they must again accept the moral responsibility for their own actions. It is surprising how soon men lose the ability to adapt themselves in the complex economic and social system that is ours. We have established a university clubhouse for these returned "GI's", where they can be alone if they want to be alone. They have their own social organization. In short, we attempt to use their own community experiences to strengthen the possibility of their individual adjustments. This task is not an easy one that confronts this University, or any other university for that matter.

Of the regular liberal arts classroom work I can speak but little, because to make an analysis of the individualized instruction programs, of the revamping of the work to support the students’ thinking about social trends, about various philosophies, about social programs, would extend these remarks too much. There has been a vast change in the content of each of the 967 courses offered by the University. May I digress here to say that The George Washington University has one of the finest groups of men in teaching of any university. The faculty number over 500, and if they worked together in any other city in the United States, where their work was not overpowered by the political atmosphere, they would be thought of as so ably serving that they would receive the full acclaim of a grateful community.

This faculty is now at work upon the revision of its curricula to care for the post-war period. Courses in the relation of government to business, courses in the relation of management and labor, courses in statistical measurements as applied to social programs and to business endeavors, courses with reference to new trends in administrative law, the inclusion of the newer fields in medicine, the adaptation in physics of the work on electronics which includes television and radar are but a few illustrations of what the University must now think about as it prepares itself to help train the young men and women for tomorrow.

I have not mentioned as I have talked with you the intimate problems of getting help or of obtaining enough floor space, or of getting laboratory equipment under war-time priorities. From your experiences you know about such things. But these adjustments, while they have consumed hours of time, and "bushels of energy", sink into insignificance as we think of the accomplishment of the men and women - trustees, administrators, teachers, researchers, students, alumni, friends, and benefactors - legion in number, who go to make up The George Washington University.

This great university body knows that education of the present must be more than a nostalgic communion with the past. Education must be vital. It must be of the factors which make today. It must equip our sons and our daughters with discipline, with courage, and with the power to convert thought and knowledge into social action. Theirs is the task of finding out whether the world's shortcomings, that brought on this soul-searing war, are based in the sheer immorality of man, or in the unbridled lust of a few for control over their fellow men.

Our sons and our daughters know that the conflagration of war must be met by brute force. The bases upon which they stand, as they accept this principle of force for a limited present, are the possibility of analyzing human motives, and the acceptance of the potency of faith that men are moral. Youth believes that tomorrow men, tried and unafraid, can and will live together in true communion. This, then, because it is your son's faith, your daughter's faith, is the faith that upholds the University as it passes through this war era.

Cloyd H. Marvin, President

The George Washington University

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Author or Source: Speech text/SPEC LD1930 .M2
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

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