The greatest single deterrent to Slavic study was the almost simultaneous death of nearly all the older leaders of Slavic scholarship. To list but a few of the more prominent: Professor John Dyneley Prince, who had retired from Columbia in 1937, died in 1945 at the age of 77; Professor Alexander Kaun, of the University of California, died at the age of 55 in 1944; Professor George Z. Patrick, of the same institution, died at the age of 63 in 1945; Professor Henry Lanz, of Stanford, died in 1945 at the age of 59; Professor Samuel Hazzard Cross, of Harvard, died in 1944 at the age of 55.[39] Thus, within three years practically all the older men in the field of Slavic literature died except Professor George Rapall Noyes and Professor Manning. The losses in history were not so severe but Professor Samuel N. Harper, of the University of Chicago, died in 1943 at the age of 61. As a result Professor Robert J. Kerner, for many years at the University of California, was the only person remaining in the field of history who had become prominent before 1914. This, in a sense, sharply delineates the earlier period of Slavic studies. Today the leaders of Slavic scholarship belong definitely to a different generation, one which is certainly better trained but does not necessarily have the range of interests which often marked the older men. Another, somewhat different, development needs to be noted. During the first years of the War, when England was severely strained by the war and the bombing of her cities, it seemed that the _Slavonic and East European Review_ would be compelled to suspend publication. To meet the crisis it was decided that the journal would continue under the direction of the American contributing editors. Thus, until his untimely death, Professor Cross was the practical editor of the magazine, assisted by Professor Leonid I. Strakhovsky. Issues appeared with both an American and British volume number. After the War when the British expressed a desire to resume publication, the American editors expanded their numbers and, with the aid of the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies, established the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies to publish _The American Slavic and East European Review_. The present committee of scholars in charge of the publication is Professor Abram Bergson of Harvard; Professor George B. Cressey of Syracuse; Professor H. H. Fisher of Stanford; Professor Alexander Gerschenkron of Harvard; Professor Oskar Halecki of Fordham University; Professor Roman Jakobson of Harvard; Professor Michael Karpovich of Harvard; Professor Robert J. Kerner of California; Professor W. Lednicki of California; Professor Philip Mosely of the Council for Foreign Relations; Professor Geroid Robinson of Columbia; Professor Alfred Senn of the University of Pennsylvania; Professor Ernest J. Simmons of Columbia; Professor S. H. Thomson of the University of Colorado; Professor George Vernadsky of Yale, and Professor Francis J.