Begin Page 1. Departmental News Letter A circular letter to former graduate students of the Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin. November 20, 1918 Dear Friends: During the earlier years when our numbers were fewer and duties less exacting, it was possible for us to keep in pretty close touch through personal letters. Recently I have regretfully come to realize that I was missing much of the pleasure and to believe that some of you might also be getting out of touch with each other as well as with the Department. Especially is this true now when war work is keeping all too busy to write much or regularly. We have undertake to meet these needs in part by the Departmental News Letter, of which I have asked Miss Maude Miller, our departmental staff, to act as "editor." If this seems worth while we shall hope to send another at some future time. In any case, I shall trust that it will serve to remind each of you of our continued interest in your welfare and our wish to be kept advised of progress in your work whether of war or peace. Sincerely yours, L. R. Jones Professor of Plant Pathology LRJ:S Enc. End Page 1. Begin Page 2. The Department extends hearty greetings to you all, to those of you who have been so long absent that we only know you by your publications, as well as those who left so recently that your pet organisms are still growing in our incubators. There have been so many changes this past year that most of you, I think, will be interested in knowing who the present members of the department are. Most of you have heard, I suppose, that Dr. A.G. Johnson is now "government cereal pathologist" and as such as created a new laboratory in the large second floor lecture room 201 (formerly the big Horticultural lecture room) and already has his new staff at work. Professor Jones must have felt as if he were confronted with the necessity of building the Department up anew when he came back from Ellison Bay this fall to find neither Dr. Keitt nor Dr. Johnson to take any of the teaching or research off his shoulders, but he is most patient and makes us believe he's quite content with our blunders. He is giving the lecture in Methods (102) and the General course (101), as well as taking most of the responsibility of seminary and research. You can imaging the number of conferences this means. Usually no more than four of us are attempting to get into his office at one time. J.G. Dickson, formerly of the Botany Department, is working part time in the cereal laboratory and giving the laboratory work in Methods. H.H. McKinney, a Michigan man, has the corner in the Pathologium formerly occupied by J.C. Walker and last year by E.E. Clayton. Miss Coerper is in charge of the culture laborator with responsibility for supplies while carrying on her research work with the soy bean and wheat organisms in addition to her editorial work. With a great deal of advice from Professor Jones, I am trying to make the laboratory in 101 (General pathology) interesting for five young women and three young men. I guess this is the first year that more than two girls have been enrolled in the course. Among the majoring graduate students the following are doing full time work: B.L. Richards, from the Utah Experiment Station via University of Chicago, D. Atanasoff, from Bulgaria, who took his B.S. in Michigan in 1917. Several others are doing part time work including Mabel Brown, who is taking her Ph.D. in Botany this year and is to continue in the plant pathological field, and Ruth Tillotson, a Wisconsin girl, who is in her first year of graduate work. The new cereal pathology laboratory is the big news item, however. This is to be headquarters with the USDA work on cereal Ascomycetes and Imperfecti, with Dr. A.G. Johnson and the head and as big a staff as the needs may justify. To begin with, in addition to Messrs. Johnson and Dickson, at work in there are Miss Edith Seymour, the Harvard curator, and Miss Grace Wineland, last year in Dr. J.C. Arthur's laboratory at Purdue. This is only well started so there are sure to be plenty more news items in our next. Aside from the new cereal laboratory, there are a few material changes. We have, however, a "new" greenhouse, including two new End Page 2. Begin Page 3. units east of the others so that this year Plant Pathology will occupy five greenhouse units to say nothing of Dr. James Johnson's unit which is really given over to tobacco pathology work. (Please not that since last June we have had to differentiate Dr. James from Hr. Aaron J.). C.M. Slagg and Ernest Bailey are assisting Dr. James Johnson. In the small research room, occupied last year by Eugene Roark, Fred R. Jones is again installed. Pea blight has loomed so big as a war problem that Uncle Sam has sent him back here to continue "to a finish" the work as a national proposition, taking it up from the point Richard Vaughan has left it. Dr. and Mrs. Bartholomew have returned from a year at Berkeley, California. He and Dr. J.P. Bennett are being drafted from pure physiology to the pathological physiology of the potato tuber. Their appointment is from Dr. W.A. Orton's office, but they will be located at Wisconsin, Bennett on full time, Bartholomew on half time. J.S. Walker has also been assigned by Dr. Orton to headquarters here this winter for the continuation of the work on onion and cabbage. Cabbage black leg has come back as a troublesome problem. Some of you know that the department adopted - limited meaning - one of the French orphans last year. Different individuals and organizations of the University undertook through the Society for Fatherless Children of France to care for all of the children in Montreuil - a village near Paris - whose fathers had been killed in the war and whose mothers needed help. Through the Society we obtained the name and addresses of this partifular child whom we were helping and his mother has sent us his photograph and several interesting and grateful letters telling us about our 5-year-old godson. His name is Edouard Debast and his address, 122 rue de Rosny, Montreuil du Bois, Seine France. Some of our representatives in France should look him up. In our last letter from Mrs. Debast she said that she had just received the quarterly renumeration afforded her through our subscription to the Society for Fatherless Children of France. She was also grateful for what she called our "grande generosite." She also wrote of the "Fete" which was given in honor of the Allied armies. Because she herself was working in a munition factory and was unable to attend, her mother took Edouard "pour voir defiles nos Allies, et en particuliers vos valeureus Soldats Americains, et ce fut une grande Fete pour lui de passe ainsi une agreable journess le soil il m'a raconte tout ce qu'il avait vu." 2024 Translation from Google: "to see our Allies parade, and in particular your valiant American Soldiers, and it was a great celebration for him to spend a pleasant day on the ground he told me everything he had seen." The enthusiasm over Edouard expressed itself in a small superfluous contribution which was applied toward a second orphan to which some of you gave so generously. We hope to continue these subscriptions next year and perhaps extend them to al least one more orphan for there will doubtless by only a few years in which we will be priviliged to extend this very personal sort of help to France. What we have tried to make a complete listing of the former members of the department is being included, so that you may know where each is located. The men who have left within the last year or two write more or less regularly so we are glad to pass on bits of the news which comes to us. We only wish time and space permitted us to write more. End Page 3. Begin Page 4. Dr. Keitt, who went across as a lieutenant and now is captain, is holding a most responsible position in the gas defense work. He writes after considerable experience "both in the training area and in the line" he has been made division gas officer, usually a "major's job." He writes further, "In the various organizations of the Division I have the direction and supervision of the work of about 30 lieutenants and 250 N.C.O.'s (non-commissioned officers). The job is to safeguard some 30,000 men against gas. The work takes me into every part of the sector and involves relationships with the whole scale of the Division personnel - from the Commanding general to privates second class." Lieut. R.E. Hartman is also in France, as are Herbert Ross and R.W. Leukel, two Wisconsin graduates of last year who were just beginning their special work in plant pathology when they turned to military service. Several of the men are in training camp. E.E. Clayton is at the Municipal Pier, Chicago, S.P. Doolittle and R.W. are at Yale. Leon K. Jones is now a lieutenant, drilling recruits at Camp Lewis, Washington. If the senior men majoring in plant pathology Willard L. Dayton is at the Naval Radio Station, Bar Harbor, Maine, and Ellis Stokdyk has just gone to Municipal Pier. C.N. Frey (who, although majoring as a graduate student in botany, was so much in pathology that we should include his name), now lieutenant in the sanitary service, is at Camp Custer, Michigan. R.D. Rands wrote August 17 from San Francisco where he, his wife and baby were waiting to sail to Java. He says, 'We sail on the 'Vondel,' Nederland Royal Mail, August 22 and will arrive in Batavia about 44 days later. More than a dozen Dutch officials with their families en route from Holland have registered for the same boat so that we shall have the opportunity to learn some Nederlandsch and possibly some Malay, the official language of Java." A second note, September 26, just at hand was written when the Vondel was passing through the Inland Sea of Japan with all well and a delightful voyage. W.H. Tisdale (Wendell) is in charge of plant pathology in the Agricultural College, Raleigh, N.C. W.B. Tisdale (Burley) is a "candidate" at the Camp Less officers training camp, Virginia. W.H. Snell was appointed forest pathologist June 1 and has been in Essex Co., New York, in the midst of all the "blistered" pines all summer, but hopes to be in Madison again this winter. Just now, I believe, he is inspecting woods for air plane construction at Berkeley, California. Charlotte Elliott took her Ph.D. here in July and accepted a position in Dr. Erwin F. Smith's office in Washington, D.C., September 1st, where she is continuing her work on the bacterial blight of oats. Ph.D. degrees were also given to James Johnson, E.W. Roark, J.C. Walker, and S.P. Doolittle in June. Messrs. Gardner, Walker, and Binnery spent the early autumn in and about Chicago working on storage diseases with Dr. Link. End Page 4. Begin Page 5. The saddest thing that has ever come to the department was the death, from pneumonia following influenza, of Eugene Roark on October 13. He enlisted in naval aviation upon completion of his graduate work and entered ground school at Minneapolis September 2, where he was undertaking the new duties with his usual whole-hearted enthusiasm when he was stricken. His mother spent the last week with him. The funeral was held with military honors from Professor Jones' home here in Madison at our regular seminary hour on Tuesday afternoon, October 15, members of our department, other university associates and friends mourning with Mrs. Roark and the family. Since Dr. Keitt's departure Mr. Roark has been carrying the fruit disease work and taking much general responsibility in the department and everyone here is feeling deeply the personal loss. His mother, Mrs. Mary C. Roark, is now in Chicago, living at 4738 Kenwood Ave., Apartment 2B. The University has its share of S.A.T.C. (Student Army and Navy Training Corps - demobilized 12/21/1918 after the armistice was signed 11/11/1918) boys enrolled. 2500 are quartered three deep in Chadbourne, Barnard, Lathrop, the 600 block on Lake St., Mendota Ct., and the Y.M.C.A. The 1700 girls are scattered around in the different bachelor apartments and frat houses and everything seems to be moving along as smoothly as ever, excepting at the cafeterias which are much crowded. All the S.A.T.C. boys are fed at Lathrop, where the bowling alleys, parlors, and halls are filled with tables. 400 civilian men are registered by they are quite inconspicuous since the S.A.T.C.'s are all in regular khakis. The 1000 mechanics are quartered in the new barracks at Camp Randall. The course of study in most of the departments, while nominally much the same, is actually modified considerably to meet the S.A.T.C. needs. Some departments as mathematics, physics, chemistry, English and French are more crowded than usual. The "flu" or some relative thereof, followed close upon the heels of the incoming S.A.T.C. and for a time consideration of this dominated all activities. For example, Miss Coerper was shut up in her apartment at the "Clark" with three afflicted companions, so she had her share of nursing, although she herself escaping. The big campus events of the month aside from President Van Hise's return from Europe and the big "liberty day" celebration, have been a national convention on the "League of Nations" presided over by Ex-president Taft and a visit from an educational commission from the English universities. The purpose of the latter was to inaugurate the movement looking to interchange of students and instructors. A similiar commission is enroute from France, hence is promises to be easier hereafter to secure international cooperation in plant pathological matters whether of educational or research. Ye editor invites contributions and criticisms. It will be much easier to get out our next if each one receiving this writes promptly telling if this reaches him, correcting any misstatements or wrong addresses, and contributing further news items. End Page 5.