THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR 
according to a plan at once all embracing and yet adjustable to the 
practical limits of the available data. 
During the actual progress of the War, however, the execution of 
this plan for a scientific and objective study of war economics 
proved impossible in any large and authoritative way. Incidental 
studies and surveys of portions of the field could be made and were 
made under the direction of the Division, but it was impossible to 
undertake a general history for obvious reasons. In the first place, 
an authoritative statement of the resources of belligerents bore di- 
rectly on the conduct of armies in the field. The result was to remove 
as far as possible from scrutiny those data of the economic life of 
the countries at war which would ordinarily, in time of peace, be 
readily available for investigation. In addition to this difficulty of 
consulting documents, collaborators competent to deal with them 
were for the most part called into national service in the belligerent 
countries and so were unavailable for research. The plan for a war 
history was therefore postponed until conditions should arise which 
would make possible not only access to essential documents, but also 
the cooperation of economists, historians, and men of affairs in the 
nations chiefly concerned, whose joint work would not be misunder- 
stood either in purpose or in content. 
Upon the termination of the War, the Endowment once more took 
up the original plan, and it was found with but slight modification 
to be applicable to the situation. Work was begun in the summer and 
autumn of 1918. In the first place a final conference of the Advisory 
Board of Economists of the Division of Economics and History was 
held in Paris, which limited itself to planning a series of short pre- 
liminary surveys of special fields. Since, however, the purely pre- 
liminary character of such studies was further emphasized by the 
fact that they were directed more especially toward those problems 
which were then fronting Europe as questions of urgency, it was 
considered best not to treat them as part of the general survey, but 
rather as of contemporary value in the period of war settlement. It 
was clear that not only could no general program be laid down a 
priori by this conference as a whole, but that a new and more highly 
specialized research organization than that already existing would 
be needed to undertake the Economic and Social History of the 
World War, one based more upon national grounds in the first in- 
stance, and less upon purely international codperation. Until the 
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