The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

The Students' Army Training Corps
Drawn up before the Michigan Union (fall of 1918)

One of the Fourteen-inch Naval Guns in France
Whose crews were largely composed of the Michigan Naval Volunteers

This broad military programme was by no means confined to the students, as the whole curriculum of the University was necessarily almost wholly subordinated to the new scheme. Many courses not included in the outline prescribed by the Government, such as the classics, fine arts, and philosophy, were practically discontinued or given in a limited form to the few men not in service and the women students in the University. Many members of the Faculty abandoned their own subjects entirely and confined their work to the courses on war issues, which had come to form an important part of the new curriculum, or to elementary work in modern languages, especially French; German being for the most part anathema. This was a mistake; as one government inspector, himself a teacher of English, was accustomed to say emphatically, German was going to be needed even more than French; and so it turned out in the later days of the occupation of Germany. Nevertheless the decline of interest in the German language and literature, which had long been so carefully cultivated, as we can see now, by the German government, is one of the permanent results of the war; while there has been a corresponding increase in the study of French and Spanish.

Throughout this period, the women of the University were far from passive spectators. Special courses in household economics, conservation of food, French, journalism, and publicity and the principles of censorship, as well as a course in drafting in the Engineering College were provided for them. The women of the Faculty and town threw themselves indefatigably into Red Cross service, with the presidential residence on the Campus, known as Angell House, as one of the principal headquarters. A Hostess House was also maintained in the parlors of Barbour Gymnasium for the families and sweethearts of men in the training detachments, while at one time the great floor of Waterman Gymnasium was used as a barracks. With the inauguration of the S.A.T.C., Alumni Memorial Hall was taken over as a Hostess House and maintained entirely by Ann Arbor women. Likewise during the worst of the influenza epidemic, the terrors of which were multiplied by the constant arrival of stricken men in new detachments, and the lack of adequate hospital facilities for such an unforeseen emergency, the women gave themselves, and in some cases their homes, to the cause, and helped to save many lives.

Thus the University gave itself over unreservedly to winning the war. No one can measure how great actually and potentially that service was. But Michigan's contribution was far from resting there. Thousands of her sons, alumni and students, were in service, a goodly proportion with the forces in France and elsewhere and with the Navy, while at least 229 are to be represented by a gold star on the University's great service flag.

Though Michigan officially remained aloof from active participation in the issues of the struggle before America entered it, she had many representatives in the fighting ranks. Professor René Talamon, of the French Department, who was spending his honeymoon in France, entered the French Army in 1914 and saw active service in all the great earlier battles, winning the Croix de Guerre on the field. He remained in uniform throughout the four years and completed his record by acting as interpreter at the Peace Conference. Frederic W. Zinn, '14e a student just graduated, was of that immortal company of Americans in the French Foreign Legion, whose exploits have so often been told, and was one of the twelve survivors of a section of sixty. He was severely wounded in the Champagne offensive and subsequently entered the French and later the American Aviation Services. There were also many Michigan men scattered through the British and Canadian forces, and at least one, Stanley J. Schooley, e'09-'12, was with the Anzacs to the end at Gallipoli. George B.F. Monk, '13d, a Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshires, was killed in Flanders, December 18, 1914, while another dental graduate, John Austen Ogden, '04d, was killed in France. Lieut. Thomas C. Bechraft, '09l, who enlisted with the Canadians, was killed by a sniper at the great British attack on Vimy Ridge, April 4, 1917;—one wonders whether he knew then that America had entered the war; and Theodore Harvey Clark, '14, died from sunstroke, September 9, 1917, while serving with the Y.M.C.A. in Mesopotamia.