Book excerpt: The author emphasizes the role of individuals and yet makes it quite evident that by the time of her centenary in the early days of World War II, Queen's had developed an organic vitality through which the vicissitudes occasioned by external fortunes or by internal tensions could be transcended. Throughout the period covered by this volume Queen's faced a long, hard struggle for adequate resources for research in terms of space, equipment, and most importanly, faculty time; the gradual development of graduate work; and the building of library resources. There was firm and creative leadership through the crises of the war and its aftermath and a renewal of optimism through the final decades of this history.