Such are the bare statistics of Michigan's part in the fight for the principles which have made America what she is. The war came slowly to the University. During the years just preceding the entrance of the United States there was probably no part of the world as little touched by the actualities overseas as the mid-western portion of the United States. The seaboard states felt it, in their commerce and other contacts with Europe, far more than the vast central region, which had been favored with an unexampled wave of prosperity. So while America was at peace, the war spirit in the University was for the most part latent, far more so than in many of the universities of the East, where the implications and the realities of the war, which always come more vividly through personal relationships, led to more vigorous preparatory measures and many enlistments for service in the English, Canadian, and French armies. The lessons the struggle on the Marne, in Flanders and Gallipoli was teaching were by no means unheeded, however, and a strong movement for military training in the University developed as early as November, 1914, when a petition signed by fifty members of the Faculty, including the Deans of the Medical, Engineering, and Law Schools, for the establishment of a military course in the University was presented to the Regents. This had no immediate effect, however, and it was not until the University Senate took similar action a year later that the movement was really inaugurated. The opinion was as yet by no means unanimous in favor of the plan, for a straw vote of the Faculty showed 85 for and 55 against the general principle of military training for students, with a somewhat smaller majority in favor of making it compulsory. A similar vote among the students showed 1,040 for the plan and 932 against it. In March, 1916, the Regents took favorable action on the project, though the course was not compulsory. Several military companies and a naval reserve unit were organized immediately, and the students were encouraged to attend the summer camps at Plattsburg and Fort Sheridan.