Yet Wood was not discouraged. He was started on a long campaign and he knew he had to prepare to prepare. Furthermore the men in the universities who could see ahead came forward in his support and in support of the idea. Four years later President Drinker of Lehigh University wrote of the amazing success of the movement: "We owe it largely to Major-General Wood's farsightedness as a man of affairs and to his great qualities as a soldier and patriot, that our country was awakened to the need of preparedness, and this beginning of military training in our youth was due wholly to his initiative." [Footnote: _National Service Magazine_.] Small as the beginning was it was a plant with the germ of strength in it, since at this first camp in Gettysburg the members formed then in 1913 the Society of the National Reserve Corps of the United States. Wood at once cooperated with this slender offshoot and gave it all the support in his power. He sent letters as Chief of Staff of the Regular Army to college presidents at the same time that the president of the new Corps did so--both suggesting an advisory committee to {211} assist the government in the encouragement and practical advancement of the training camp idea. This committee was formed and Presidents Hibben of Princeton and Drinker of Lehigh were elected president and secretary. The committee with these officers in charge gave assistance to Wood in his organizing work so that out of the small beginnings in the two camps an enormous organization arose which trained tens of thousands of young men to be officers and made the immense expansion of the little American army to 4,000,000 soldiers possible. Pushing always quietly but unremittingly ahead Wood helped these officers to increase the camps from two to four in the summer of 1914--in Vermont, Michigan, North Carolina and California--with a total attendance of 667 students. Then came the Great War and the beginning of the work on a large scale. From college students, who reported on the interest and pleasure which they got out of the summer camp, the life in the open and the military instruction afforded by regular army men, the movement extended to business men, lawyers, preachers and so on. Wood {212} opened the Plattsburg camp on Lake Champlain to the latter and started the first business man's camp. Each man paid his own railway fares, his own living expenses while in camp and bought his uniform and equipment, except arms, with his own money. That year (1915) 3,406 men attended the five camps. In 1916 six camps were opened and 16,139 men attended them. At the close of the first Plattsburg camp the business men formed an organization for furthering and extending this training just as the college men had done at Gettysburg two years before. And in 1916 these two organizations consolidated and organized the present Military Training Camps Association of the United States.