E k a E 4 Serious epidemics have always been major events in the lives of everyone who experienced them and in time of war they have had a significant effect on military operations. But their larger effects have generally gone un- noticed because the epidemics them- selves have left scarcely a trace on public memory. The influenza epi- demic of 1918-1919 killed more peo- ple in a shorter time than any other disaster of any kind on record. Like the lesser smallpox epidemic de- scribed by Fenn, it had far-reaching effects on the conduct of the war that went with it and on the lives of every- one who survived it. But it received ?/?scant coverage from the press of the time and disappeared from public memory almost instantly. Paul Fussell found no occasion to mention it in The Great War and Modern Memory. It did not get serious examination by historians until 1976, when Alfred Crosby assessed its lethal extent. Crosby, in a searching afterword to his study, noted the attention that the epidemic received in memoirs and autobiographies and its almost total absence from twentieth- century literature and from the stand- ard textbook histories of the United States. “The average college graduate born since 1918,” he observed, “liter- ally knows more about the Black Death of the fourteenth century than the World War I pandemic, although it is undoubtedly true that several of his or her older friends or relatives lived through it and, if asked, could describe the experience in some detail.” “Oxford University Press. 1975. “Crosby, 314-315. Epidemic and Peace, pp. B MIKE February 14, 2002 ste pavdomee THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY NEW YORK 10021-6399