The trying circumstances under which the schools have been carried on, serving nobly during the term after hours and during vacations, make their achievements a record of honor. In the country districts where all the local officials were mobilized, the teacher became the sole agent of government, making out passports, requisitions, relief lists, etc., procuring food, operating a public kitchen, acting as postmaster, doing guard duty, and rendering numberless other services to the community. One of the first tasks of the primary schools was to undertake entire care of children left without adequate protection. In country districts the teachers were, in default of newspapers, the dispensers of official information, explaining government loans and giving talks on the progress of the war. Thus the entire village was brought into the schoolhouse, which became the real center of the community. In the United States and Canada the schools may well copy some of the measures initiated in Europe. That we are 3000 miles from the actual battleground ought, for the present, to keep us from considering any lowering of educational bars or from converting our buildings into purposes other than educational. Europe advises us that such transformation is of an emergency nature and only to be made under stress of an invasion. It is the purpose of this chapter to consider some general uses of our buildings, our equipment (including the teaching force), and the activities of our pupils, which have been made in the past two or three years, excluding and reserving for the most part for later discussion the introduction of war work in manual-training, domestic-arts, and domestic-science courses, and the part-time agricultural labor.