French and British universities and colleges threw open their doors for those who were prepared to undertake collegiate and post-graduate work. With the Sorbonne leading the list, thirty French institutions offered lectures and courses of study, while at Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Liverpool, Manchester, St. Andrews, and elsewhere in the British Isles a welcome awaited the American army man. Furloughs were granted to officers and enlisted men for this work and during the latter part of the winter and the spring of 1919 2,000 worked at British universities, filling to the last one the possibility for their accommodation, although four times as many had applied for the privilege. As many more attended the Sorbonne and other institutions in Paris, while the provincial universities and colleges of France had also their quota. Solicitous for the welfare of the Expeditionary Force and determined that its members should not fall below the high standard it had established of individual worth and soldierly quality, the War Department met the problem of leaves of absence in a strange land by establishing “leave areas” in especially interesting sections of France wherein was offered a varied program of rest, change, recreation and entertainment. More than a dozen famous resorts in the Alps, the Pyrenees, along the Riviera and elsewhere were leased in whole or in part and put in charge of the Y. M. C. A., which saw to it that the men on leave had a thoroughly good time. Once in four months each soldier in service was entitled to a week’s outing at whichever one of these leave areas he preferred to visit. Beginning in the winter of 1918, during the first year of the operation of this system 220,000 soldiers were thus given an opportunity for recreation and sent back to their duties wholesomely refreshed. Several civil organizations coöperated with the War Department in work for the welfare of the soldier in training and overseas and very greatly aided the Government in its effort to enable the men who composed the army to return to their homes better and more capable men than they were when they left upon their country’s service. These and their activities are described in more detail in the chapter on “Big Brothering the Army.” But here the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, the War Camp Community Service, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army and the American Library Association must be referred to briefly because of the very great importance of what they did for the welfare of the American soldiers and because of their influence upon the character of the American Army.