The activities of the Club were again interpreted as it had been in 1914, by the Second World War. The last meeting was held May 9, 1940, the day before the Nazis invaded France and Belgium. While the French members were mobilized, the Americans hesitated to leave France until the American declaration of war after Pearl Harbor (December 1941) made it imperative for them to leave. Thus the older men who had practiced in France all their professional life-such as Hipwell, Williams, Wilson, Merril etc. and the younger men such as Davenport, born and raised in France or Locffler, Ortian, Brigham who had come with the American Expeditionary Forces in 1917,  all returned to America, some to retire and others to reestablish themselves as best they could, for some of them did not possess the legal right to practice in the U.S.A. (State Examination Board). The only American to stay out the war years in Pans was Hally-Smith who was interned briefly but released due to his age (65). During the German occupation, one of our French members Brille was taken away by the nazis and never heard of again. After the war, only Loeffler and Davenport were to return to Paris to practice for a few more years before their retirement. No new waves of American dentists have come to fill the ranks but the Club resumed its activities in 1946. In 1952 the annual exchange visits with the American Dental Club of London were resumed. The number of French dentists going to America for a DDS or post-graduate courses increased as economic and political conditions improved and facilities were given to foreign students, particularly by some American university, such as the University of Pennsylvania, Tufts and Boston Universities. The requirement to hold an American or Canadian DDS degree to become an active member was maintained but a quota was placed to allow a number of practicing dentists who had had some American dental education, but no DDS, to become Associate members. It is in the post-war wave of French dentists going to America that we will find women seeking to obtain a DDS degree. On their return they will grace our meetings as Active members of the Club. Cut off from America during the five war years the French dentists avidly absorbed all the information they could obtain on the progress which had been made in materials, equipment and techniques in the USA. The Club invited many of the outstanding Americans in their specially to give lectures and courses such as Jerome Schweitzer and Laurenson in oral rehabilitation, Herbert Shilder in endodontia, Nathan Shore for T.M.O. disorders or Henry Goldman and Irving Glickman for periodontia. Outstanding European teachers are also invited such as Held from Geneva and Goransson from Sweden. During the first years after VE day, while American troops were still in France, officers of the Army Dental Corps under the command of Col. William Ryder, unstintingly contributed information and knowledge during the meetings of the Club held on the first Thursday of each month. On December 10, 1944 the Club organized a ceremony on the occasion of the return of the statue of Horace Wells which had been removed from the Place des Etats-Unis in Paris during the war years. The statue which had been inaugurated in 1910 had been removed and hidden to spare it outrage by Nazi hoodlums during the occupation of Paris. The discoverer of general anesthesia was thus honored on the 100th anniversary of the first practical application of the use of nitrous oxide at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Jacques FOURE  D.D.S.
(October 13th,1990)