The crisis through which the world has just passed was reached at a mighty cost of money, suffering, sorrow and life. It has freed the people of many nations, it is to be hoped that it has amalgamated the many peoples of our own; and if the world has been made safe, the tremendous effort will not have been made in vain. There will always be wars, but the waging of them will not be undertaken by the more highly civilized nations without just deliberation. The war has produced a mental quickening

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... which has advanced our knowledge of the mechanical and the scientific far beyond that of a like period of peace. Our country is no longer isolated from other countries. Through science the world has become so contracted, as regards transportation, that whereas Columbus spent many weeks sailing from the old world to the new, it now takes but twenty-four hours to travel by air from the old world to the new, and but four and one half days by water. The medical professsion may be justly proud of the record made by organized medicine during the war. The carrying on of this war, above all others, was dependent to an extraordinary degree on the physician. This statement applies to the medical profession as a whole, which is alike the world over, there being little difference in the capabilities of the leading men. In the wars of the past, generals have deplored the losses due to disease, which were always greater than from injury in action and were looked on as a necessary and inevitable accompaniment of war. In this war there were more than two deaths from injury and its results to one of disease, and yet the world lauded the strategy developed by commanding officers. There have been but few instances of military strategy and almost no casualties among the higher officers in command. The real strategy of this war has been the control of disease by the men in the medical corps who reduced the loss of man power by preventive medicine, and by treat¬ ment controlled diseases that in the past were deter¬ mining factors in the defeat of armies. The failure of the British in the Mesopotamia campaign was a med¬ ical failure due in part to lack of rank and attendant authority vested in the medical officers, and in part to army ethics, which made conferences difficult between officers of dissimilar rank. We need only to recall the yearly loss of 250 to each thousand men in the Crimean War, or the record of typhoid in the Boer and Spanish-American wars to realize the benefits of medical con¬ trol of typhoid and of typhus fever when they started in Siberia. We must aiso recall the improved morale incident to the modern treatment and quick healing of wounds, whereby men were repeatedly returned to the ranks, instead of remaining permanently disabled and becoming a charge of their country, as in former war¬ fare. Japan, one of the last countries to accept mod¬ ern civilization, was the first to realize the importance of caring for the health of her troops; her medical offi¬ cers were held responsible, and in consequence Japan was able to defeat an apparently stronger nation. The exceedingly low disease record of the Japanese army was reduced more than one half in our training camps through the efficiency of that master of preventive medicine, Surgeon-General Gorgas, under whose direc¬ tion the most efficient army medical organization was perfected that has ever been developed. The mortality rate of our troops in France was lower than that at home among civilians. Long before our country became engaged in the struggle, hundreds of our profession, feeling the call of humanity, volunteered their services to France and England and served there faithfully and well, suffering many casualties. Our Reserve Medical Corps in France sustained 442 casualties; thus the percentage of losses of noncombatants equaled that of the infantry and artillery. Forty-six officers were killed in action, 22 died of wounds, 12 of accidents, 101 of disease, 4 were lost at sea, 7 were missing in action, 212 were wounded, and 38 were taken prisoners. For months before our country declared war, the first and best organization in preparation was the medical organiza¬ tion under the Medical Board of the Council of National Defense. These preparations were carried out for the purpose of aiding the Medical Department should war be declared. Practically one third of the active members of our profession, whose age, training and capabilities met the requirements of the Surgeon-General, were commissioned for service. Seventy thousand of the medical men not enrolled in the Med¬ ical Corps in active service were members of the Vol¬ unteer Medical Service Corps. In this group were included the members of the 5,000 local examining draft boards. It is deplorable, and a blot in the history of this war, that the work of the American medical profession was not recognized by the general staff and that rank, according to responsibility, was withheld in most instances until the war was nearly or quite over. A comparatively long period of service in Washington enables me positively to state that the same unfairness toward the medical army officer still exists. Our gov¬ ernment has maintained, at great expense, special places for the training of its army officers, even for their preliminary education, such as West Point for the Army, and Annapolis for the Navy. Students are given opportunity for service after graduation by con¬ tinued training, maintaining the highest efficiency pos¬ sible. The government in the past, however, has been at no expense in the training of the medical officers, but it has a postgraduate school for the purpose of training in the theory and practice of military medicine. No account has been taken of the fact that the men in the Medical Reserve Corps had had an average train¬ ing of at least twenty years, and that their university course and medical course had cost not less than $5,000 for each person. In spite of the injustice of rank and the inaccuracies of assignments, the members of the Reserve Medical Corps sacrificed freely and willingly that our troops might receive the best that medical education afforded. The work in hospitals, including general and special practices, should at least qualify the physician to be placed on a par with the line officer of the army who has had a similar number of years of inactive duty in times of peace. The soldier is rewarded or promoted for risk of life and personal valor; an officer who is given authority to command the destruction of life may have spent but a few