His first published work came in "Gazeta Transilvaniei" in 1915, followed the next year by articles in "Revista Teologică". Following the Romanian Old Kingdom's August 1916 entry into World War I, he and several other young Transylvanian intellectuals, among them Oțetea, crossed the border into Romania. Colan subsequently enrolled in the Literature faculty of the University of Bucharest. When the capital Bucharest was evacuated during the Battle of Bucharest, he left for Roman in Moldavia, where he tutored high schoolers. Next, he ended up in a Ukrainian village, near Yelisavetgrad, where, together with other refugee Transylvanians who included Ion Agârbiceanu, he organized a church choir that delivered responses in Romanian to the priests' Slavonic.