The field for service of a college is not necessarily limited to extending the usefulness of its vocational departments to meet the war-emergency demands. As has already been noted, the department of French may give courses in conversational French in armories and in cantonments. Sir Robert Blair writes:
We had this plan in England, and as volunteering grew to very considerable dimensions towards the close of 1914 and there were tens of thousands of soldiers grouped within the near neighborhood of London, an arrangement was made with the war-office authorities for the teaching of French.
Courses in mathematics applicable to war needs may be given. The college may send tutors to cantonments to give instruction to undergraduates who have not completed their college work and who would like to receive a college diploma. Colleges can coöperate with the Y.M.C.A., to which has been given the privilege of looking after the recreational features in cantonments. American college boys and others will not be satisfied with formal military training. They will want health talks, entertaining and educational lectures, and instruction as to many things helpful in civil as well as in military life.
There is a large opportunity, in a field as yet hardly touched, for departments of psychology in universities to help in selecting men for different branches of war service and to give vocational guidance to men who leave the service unfitted by war work to reënter their former occupations and perhaps untrained to enter a new service. A staff of psychologists is now at work in each of our cantonments applying intelligence ratings.
There are two distinct uses for the ratings which are given the men as a result of the psychological examinations. One of these uses is military and consists in furnishing a commanding officer with the rating of each man in his command, by which he may, if he chooses, be guided in selecting men for promotion, or for special duties requiring more than average intelligence and mental quickness. The other use is medical and is the thing specifically sought--to find men who are so markedly below the average in intelligence as to demand consideration for discharge or for assignment to simple manual work under careful supervision.