teacher," they were but voicing the feelings of his fellows both inside and outside the department, in fact of all privileged to know him.
Hugo P. Thieme, 1926-40. — At the June meeting of the Regents in 1926 Professor Hugo Paul Thieme (Johns Hopkins '93, Ph.D. ibid. '97) was appointed Chairman. He had come to the University as an instructor in French in 1898 and had advanced to a full professorship in 1914. In the fourteen years of his chairmanship he displayed remarkable energy and exercised his gift for organization and his talent for systematization. Under his vigorous guidance the previous development of courses was continued. In oral French and French composition the work was reorganized and new courses were introduced, the offerings in Romance philology were further expanded, and more intense and specialized instruction in modern and contemporary literature was provided. He paid particular attention to the development of the courses on the graduate level.
Professor Thieme was to have retired on June 30, 1940, but he died on June 2, after a severe illness of several months, and Hayward Keniston (Harvard '04, Ph.D. ibid. '11) was called from the University of Chicago to be Professor of Romance Languages and Chairman of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. Professor Thieme had been in the department for forty-two years and was a member of the council of the Société des textes français modernes and American correspondent of the Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France. For his scholarly work and for his tireless efforts in behalf of an understanding of French culture in this country, he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1923; in 1929 he received the Prix de la langue of the French Academy; and his great bibliography was crowned, upon its publication, by the Academy.
Since the new organization was adopted in 1933 (see p. 715) , the department has been administered by a chairman and an executive committee of four appointed by the dean and executive committee of the College. This provides for greater participation on the part of the staff in matters of administration and policy.
The period of the World War. — As might be expected, the peak in the study of French was reached in 1918-19, when French 1, a four-hour course, was given at every hour from 8 A.M. to 3 P.M. inclusive, and seventeen instructors were employed, two of whom were women. These two, Mme Pargment and Mme Pawlowski, were designated as teaching assistants in French. That year several members of the University faculty who normally taught German — Professors Wait, Scholl, and Lee — were busy teaching beginning French. Among those teaching second-year French were Professors Bonner and Winter of the Departments of Greek and Latin. Michael S. Pargment (Dipl. d'études univ., Paris '11) gave an intermediate course in military French for enlisted men in the Students' Army Training Corps. In this course special emphasis was placed on the spoken language. Jean Petit gave an advanced course in military French, which was open to men in military training who had had more than two years of French. Emphasis was placed on spoken French for the military services. Similar courses were given in the College of Engineering. During the war, several members were on leave: Assistant Professor René Talamon (Lic.-ès-lettres [lettres], Paris '00, Lic.-ès-lettres [langues], ibid. '01), for the duration of the war in service with the French army; Herbert Alden Kenyon, then an assistant professor, in Washington with the Military Intelligence Division of the General Staff; Instructor Harry Carleton Barnett (Dartmouth '12, A.M. Michigan '17), with a
