 After one year's service in the army he was demobilised in 1919 and entered Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to study agriculture.Arriving almost penniless, he successfully completed a four-year degree course in two years.In 1920 he was elected president of Cornell's Cosmopolitan Club, which was mostly for foreign students, and found that it had large debts and depended on the philanthropy of its alumni and others.