When upperclassmen return to Harvard's classrooms on Wednesday and Thursday, they will find a Faculty that has been literally decimated by the country's national defense effort, for many of the University's best-known figures have moved from Cambridge to Washington to fill important governmental posts "for the duration."

Hardest hit of the departments is History, which will be missing men such as William L. Langer, Coolidge Professor of History, and John K. Fairbank, instructor in History, and Far-Eastern expert. Langer has been appointed chief of the Department of Special Information. Other men from Harvard aiding Langer and Fairbank in analyzing and assimilating the news of the world for the personal use of the President and Congress are Donald C. McKay, who was an assistant professor of History last year, and Edward Y. Hartshorne, instructor in Sociology.

The Government staff will go without Merle Fainsod, an assistant professor in the department, and Rupert Emerson, who was also an assistant professor. Fainsod will take charge of a governmental bureau; while Emerson, who argued with Ickes when in the Division of Territories and Island Possessions, will retire from that office for a new post.

Bill Elliott in OPM

Also, William Yandell Elliott, professor of Government, will be here only part time since he will be working in his office as Special Consultant in the Division of Industrial Materials in the OPM.

Another part-time worker in Washington will be Carl J. Friedrich, who has gone to England as a member of the President's special commissions dealing with civilian defense. In Great Britain during the summer with President Conant's National Defense Research Committee were George B. Kistiakowsky, professor of Chemistry, and Edwin B. Wilson, professor of Vital Statistics.

The Economics staff will not get by unscathed, for it will lose Edward S. Mason, a professor in the department, while the School of Public Administration will be minus Alvin H. Hansen, Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy.

Sidney B. Fay, professor of History, will fill in for the first half year on modern European History which Langer made one of the most popular courses in the University. A visiting lecturer, whose name is still to be announced, will take the second semester.