Consequently, in 1919, there was organized the Society for the Advancement of Slavonic Study. The nucleus of this group was Slavs from various organizations, especially Czechs and Yugoslavs. The first president was Miss Sarka B. Hrbkova who had come to New York from Nebraska after the dissolution of the department at the state university there. The secretary was Leon Zelenka Lerando of Lafayette College. A few meetings were held in 1922 with the final one at Columbia. The society did not prove to be a success, however, largely because of the inability of the founders to realize the aims of the society. It published a few numbers of a bulletin but the addresses at the meetings were made largely under the mistaken impression that the “findings” of the society would pass for final pronunciamentos on many of the most disputed subjects of Slavic scholarship. It must be confessed, also, that many of these “findings” were based upon the political decisions made at Versailles and previously advanced by movements such as the Czechoslovak National Committee. As a result, the organization rapidly lost standing and it very soon ceased to exist. Yet the seed which it had sown was not entirely wasted. In 1922, Professor Manning discussed with the Modern Language Association the possibility of organizing the scholars of Slavic languages and literatures under its auspices. From the very beginning, the attitude of Professor Manning and the other founders was to avoid the difficulties that had arisen earlier between the Association and the Society for the Advancement of Slavonic Study. The first meeting, under the chairmanship of Professor Manning, was poorly attended and some of the papers read were decidedly amateurish; but the group continued. During the intervening years, the original group has been developed into two: one for Slavic literatures and one for Slavic philology. The attendance is composed of members of the Association who are either actively or passively interested in Slavic studies. This is very different from the early years when it became necessary to do everything possible to secure an audience for the few persons who ventured to submit papers. During the early years, Professor Manning remained as chairman and the secretary was usually chosen from one of the representatives of the Slavic communities who had shown some interest in the undertaking. Now the posts of chairman and secretary are rotated, more or less regularly, and most professors of Slavic in the country have filled a position at least once. Even so, the group has not sufficiently developed to apply for recognition as a section parallel to those for English, Romance and Germanic. Despite this, one of its members, Professor Ernest J. Simmons, has been elected to the post of Director of the Modern Language Association for one term.