Libraries in the Army Educational Program HENRY BARTLETT VAN HOESEN, ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, N. J. NE of the eye-openers of the war was undoubtedly the revelation of the lack of education in the United States. We realized this at the start, but mainly in the superficial matters, in details which were merely a part of our foreign policy of "splendid isolation." Articles, such as an editorial in the Independent (Sept. 21, 1918) pointed out what should have been an obvious fact, that we lacked perhaps as much in 'intellectual preparedness" as in military preparedness. Very few, however, realize, even now, how uneducated we are, even in elementary, peace-time education. Articles such as Bruère's "New Nationalism and Education" (Harper's, July, 1919), ought to have the widest dissemination among selfsatisfied Americans who have been fed up with statistics on literacy and illiteracy and self-glorifying histories of "the land of the free and equal." Every one ought to know also of the mountaineers who were inclined to resist the draft, but having once reconciled themselves to it, saw in it, among the first things, the opportunity to learn to write letters home, to read letters from home, and the other things which follow. Many of our foreign-born soldiers were equally illiterate so far as English is concerned. So that, in all, some twenty-five per cent of the draft army could be classed as illiterates. As we have prided ourselves on efficiency we shall read with some chagrin, in Bruère's article again, the statement of the army's great lack of occupational experts. The army's trade classification enumerated 714 distinct occupations. The Army Staff Corps called for 82,000 occupational specialists in every 100,000 men enlisted; even infantry divisions required 40,000 occupational specialists in every 100,000 men enlisted. But out of 250,000 draftees who were trade-tested only six per cent could qualify as experts. In short, three different classes of men (the three together including practically every man in the army) needed education; the first felt themselves to be intellectually unprepared for war, in its historical, political, economic, racial, and other aspects; the second class lacked the first beginnings of schooling indispensable to any intelligent American citizenship; the third class absolutely had to learn a trade, or to learn it better than they had before, in order to serve their part in the army. For the third class of men the War Department, perforce, arranged a system of training. In the education for literacy and citizenship, officers and welfare organization secretaries were prompt in trying to meet their opportunities. The "intellectuals"—and they furnished their quota of men-read, read the newspapers, letters from home, or books from the camp library and hut branch libraries. They and all others who realized the importance of keeping in touch with their civilian life and occupations, were the men to whom the camp libraries were most obviously a boon in an educational way (the recreational side being out of consideration here). The men in the army in general were not different from the men they had been at home. Every one wanted to better himself, both in his army life and afterwards, and, therefore, the ideal army education would have been a combination of the best public school system, vocational training system, and university system, plus military science in its thousand and one different subjects, from ballistics down, or up, to farriery, and, with these, all library facilities, as in public, school, and university libraries. The library in such an ideal scheme would have come quite naturally, but the urgency due to our military unpreparedness could by no possibility permit of a complete civilian educational system, and practically the whole matter was delegated by the Commission on Training Camp Activities to the welfare organizations, particularly to the American Library Association, which was to assume the entire responsibility of furnishing books. And even with this slim provision, the common allusion to the army as a university is no idle comparison. Given a camp of 10,000 or 20,000 men, drawn from all walks of life, and you have a clientele of such a university of tastes as few universities or libraries in the ordinary and peaceful course of events have the good fortune to serve. This was the problem for the American Library Association in the fifty large cantonments and various smaller camps in this country, and the organizing, equipping, and manning of these miniature public libraries was no slight undertaking. And its relative success in meeting the demands of this great variety of readers must have demonstrated to many a man the truth of a certain librarian's remark, that "an interested reader with a collection of books covering all sciences taught in a university is itself a university." Further, to the books which themselves teach, add the library subject indexes and a reference librarian to answer bibliographical questions, and you have the material for the best kind of education, that is, self-education, for which all our schools and all our teachers, after all, do but prepare us. Given the fact of education in the army, and given the recognized place of the library in education, the library in the educational system in the army seems a foregone conclusion, however otherwise the thing may have actually come about. The training camp libraries in this country could, of course, and did, undertake to provide their readers any book the request for which was within reason. They equipped themselves, first, with small reference libraries and with books on military science and its various branches, which formed the supplement, as it is the proper function for the library to do, for the class work under instructors with or without textbooks. The same thing was true of technical books in their relation to army trades. Then, perhaps next in their consideration were the books of more general interest, beginning with interests aroused by the war-books on the war itself, books on United States history, and on French and British literature and history, and ending with the old and new friends of literature and history, philosophy and religion, from Plato to Sir Oliver Lodge, from Homer to Amy Lowell. *Professor E. C. Richardson, "The place of the library in a university.'' If our general state of unpreparedness and the haste consequent thereon made the camp libraries a big undertaking, the work overseas was a still more difficult one. A carefully considered educational system was organized in the A. E. F., however, working, as in our own training camps, through the military instructors for military things and the Y. M. C. A. educational department for civilian subjects. The writer has in hand a part of the American Library Association documents and correspondence showing the development of these plans and the part played in them by the army libraries. The first of these is a letter from Mr. Burton E. Stevenson, the American Library Association European representative, to Prof. John Erskine, the Y. M. C. A. Educational Director with the A. E. F. The letter, submitted at a couple of hours' notice, gives a model, though tentative list of books for miniature public libraries to be provided by the American Library Association for "Y. M. C. A. huts and all other centers where libraries are to be established for the service of the A. E. F.," and announces, supplementary to this small standard library, a mail service to supply requests for advanced and unusual books. This was in September, 1918. Late in the following month a general order was issued approving the educational system organized by the Y. M. C. A. Army Educational Commission "for instruction of officers and soldiers in all of the larger posts, camps and hospitals of the American Expeditionary Forces." The subjects of instruction were of the sort indicated above as bearing on the war, of technical vocational interest, or attractive to men who had missed the American common school education. Before the armistice, the emphasis seems to have been on things European, particularly French; after the armistice, on things Americanhistory, economic problems, professions, and citizenship. The library work in France was carefully co-ordinated with the work of the Army Educational Commission, but it did not wait for the materialization of the general educational plans. Mr. Stevenson's letter of September was diligently put into effect as rapidly as possible. Ilis tentative list grew into a more carefully selected list of 900 books indexed in something over 350 subjects. Small preliminary supplies of books were distributed to all school officers and instructors who applied for them. Among the sig nificant anecdotes, which were admitted all too rarely in the reports to the American Library Association, is that of an officer who in January drove from Luxemburg to the headquarters of the Association in Paris, brought in his barracks trunk, and announced that he was domiciled there in the office until the trunk should be filled with the books he needed for his teachers. Also, of course, the mail service alluded to above was carried on. "Educational libraries" were distributed and formed, one report significantly remarks, the nuclei of Post or Divisional Schools. These collections consisted of about 400 volumes, selected from the list of 900, and were supplied to 320 different posts. Supplementary to these were the "special educational collections," likewise selected from the list of 900 books on 350 or more different subjects, according to the lines of specialization in the several army schools-collections, for example, on automobile engines, agriculture, road-making, and some subjects less to be expected, such as child-welfare, Latin, Greek, and even Sanskrit, as well as histories and literatures of all modern nations. In the A. E. F. University Library at Beaune there were 30,000 volumes. It was opened on March 15th, nine days after the arrival of the librarian. The University had opened with an enrolment of some 9,000 students. The librarian could have kept twenty trained librarians busy for two months, but had from the American Library Association only his assistant librarian, reference librarian, and cataloguer. The situation was made possible only by the assignment to library duty of army men who had excellent qualifications for the work. They rushed through the first 10,000 books, working day and night. The readers were waiting for them, and once the reading room was opened the readers multiplied. The normal seating capacity of 400 was increased to 700 by the moving in of chairs. Then there was standing room only. Then not even that. Another incidental remark in one of the reports says, "In fact, it was utterly impossible to get to the |