470 MEMOIRS NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. [vol. xv, 



organization to another. The original assignments in the four cantonments examined in the 

 fall of 1917 were made largely according to district and local board quotas. The principle 

 involved planned to keep men from the same locality together. It often produced wide varia- 

 tions in the distributions of intelligence, in percentages of native illiterates and foreign-speaking 

 groups. Certain professional groups, such as medical officers, Regular Army units, the field 

 signal battalions, engineer officers, and the less specialized artillery officers, also produce partly 

 skewed distributions. 



In general, therefore, the men examined with examination a in the fall of 1917 are a selected 

 group. They probably represent the types in the National Army, but do not give us a final 

 national intelligence distribution. The above considerations hmit the general significance 

 of results. They further determined certain modifications and additions made to the original 

 methods during this period. 



Section 2. — Conditions iinihin the cantonments. 



Numerous details of camp administration affected the original plan of examining. In 

 the four camps skeleton organizations were formed previous to the arrival of the psychological 

 staffs. Officers attached to them were new. To interrupt the already sufficiently unstable 

 and novel relations by an entirely strange examination called for unusual appreciation of the 

 probable value, of such tests on the part of commanding generals and other commanding officers. 

 Few officers objected seriously to the order for such examinations, but the time required for 

 repeated examination of the same men became an important issue in the administration of 

 the tests. It was found practically impossible to hold men for successive trials. The importance 

 of careful preliminary segregation became apparent at once. Various expedients were devised 

 to prevent men from attempting examinations in which they were certain to fail, thus neces- 

 sitating a second and third examination. For the same reason recalls of men who had failed 

 in some examination were partially abandoned. To increase speed, the size of groups examined 

 by a single examiner was rapidly increased in examination a and in the group skill test. In 

 rooms capable of holding comfortably 150 to 200 men, the smaller groups recommended in 

 instructions to examiners proved to present less satisfactory examining conditions than a 

 filled room. 



The conditions indicated led some of the camp staffs to defer practically all individual 

 examinations until the completion of the group examination of an organization. Psychiatric 

 work, also new, was organized as a part of the base hospital staff only. Reports on low mental 

 age cases were therefore made through the commanding officer of the hospital and full appro- 

 priate action on all men was not possible. Only extremely low-grade men could be discharged 

 and border-line cases were returned to their respective units in the absence of opportunity 

 to assign them to service and labor organizations. 



The fall work of examining began, as stated above, with divisional organizations. These 

 were usually incomplete and in one camp second and third calls from the different organizations 

 were necessary to obtain all men for examination. For example, an organization would be 

 examined in October. In December succeeding drafts and transfers had increased the strength 

 of the organization often to double its original size. Practically none of these newly assigned 

 men had been examined. The chief examiner must send requests to have all men not exam- 

 ined report for the examination. The continued confusion thus produced was not conducive 

 to a favorable attitude on the part of officers and men. It led psychological examiners to plan 

 the work so that extra recalls, experiments, and objective checks on method would be reduced 

 to the minimum. Reports of results were necessarily partial; totals of men examined practi- 

 cally never checked; and distributions prepared for special emergencies often overlapped. 



Opportunity to install psychological examining differed in the camps. Devens and Lee 

 began work fairly promptly. DLx and Taylor were delayed. Dix was unable to establish regular 

 examining on account of lack of space for group examining and incomplete organization of units 

 within the division. Taylor began examining in November. Incomplete official instructions 

 and unfavorable local conditions operated to delay the work and to make the demonstration 



