Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/258

BETWEEN THE WARS 76.—Architects' drawing of a new home for the Library and Museum, authorized by Congress in September 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, an event which brought an end to the plan.

much and labor is so scarce," suggesting that construction "ought to be postponed until some more appropriate time" after the national defense program then underway was ended.

Mr. May urged the necessity of the new building but in effect accepted the position taken by Mr. Rich, pointing out that the bill was merely an authorization, without an appropriation, and expressing the belief that nothing further, other than the preparation of plans then underway, was to be done about the matter "until after the emergency is over." Unanimous consent was accordingly given to consideration of the bill, which was passed and, on 24 September 1941, was signed by the President (fig. 76).

Representative May's estimate of the lack of effect of passage of the increased authorization upon actual construction proved to be well founded. Work on plans continued until in December, when the events at Pearl Harbor transformed the "emergency" into active participation in full-scale, all-out, unlimited war—a state of affairs in which, by tacit consent, the Nation's medical treasures of the Library and Museum would continue to be housed in a "rather decrepit old red brick building" to whose "dingy halls * * * the world's foremost medical scholars" would continue to come—as they had been coming for more than half a century.