206 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



from sixty company commanders who were requested to 

 designate their ten "best" and their ten "poorest" privates. 

 Of the "poorest," 57.5 per cent, graded D or D ; less 

 than 3 per cent, graded A or B. The results suggest that 

 intelligence is likely to prove the most important single 

 factor in determining a man's value to the military ser- 

 vice. 



In one training camp excellent opportunity was of- 

 fered to compare a group of soldiers selected on the basis 

 of low military value with a complete draft quota. In 

 the "low value" group there were 147 men, in the com- 

 plete draft quota 12,341 men. The distributions of intel- 

 ligence ratings for these two military groups appear as 

 Fig. 7, from which it is clear that if all men with intelli- 

 gence ratings below C had been eliminated, the "low 

 value" group would have been reduced by at least half. 



In a certain training camp 221 inapt soldiers, belong- 

 ing to a negro regiment of Pioneer Infantry, were re- 

 ferred by their commanding officer for special psychologi- 

 cal examination. Nearly one-half (109) of these men 

 were found to have mental ages of seven years or less. 

 The army nevertheless had been attempting to train these 

 men for military service. In justice to the Psychological 

 Service it should be stated that these negroes had been 

 transferred from camps where there were no psychologi- 

 cal examiners. For this reason they had not been ex- 

 amined before being assigned to an organization for 

 regular training. 



In another instance some 306 soldiers from organiza- 

 tions about to be sent overseas were designated by their 

 commanding officers as unfit for foreign service. They 

 were referred for psychological examination with the re- 

 sult that 90 per cent, were discovered to be ten years or 

 less in mental age, and 80 per cent, nine years or less. 



It has been discovered that when soldiers are assigned 

 to training units without regard to intelligence, extreme 

 inequalities in the mental strength of companies and regi- 



