90 REPORT OF THE PSYCHOLOGY COMMITTEE 



psychological service would unquestionably be much broader 

 than had been supposed. The official medical inspector of 

 this work in his report listed its chief purposes as: {a) to aid 

 in segregating the mentally incompetent, {b) to classify men 

 according to their mental capacity, and {c) to assist in select- 

 ing competent men for responsible positions. 



With the extension of psychological examining, these three 

 lines of application rapidly became differentiated, and both 

 line and medical officers discovered, for themselves or with 

 the assistance of psychological examiners, new and important 

 ways of utilizing mental ratings to increase military effici- 

 ency and to lessen the cost of training and maintenance. 

 The principal practical uses of these ratings common to the 

 majority of the training camps in which the service was or- 

 ganized are listed below: 



(i) For the discovery of men whose superior intelligence 

 warranted their consideration for promotion, special training 

 or assignment to positions of unusual responsibility or diffi- 

 culty; (2) for assistance in selecting suitable candidates for 

 officers' training schools, non-commissioned officers' training 

 schools and other special training organizations; (3) for the 

 guidance of personnel adjutants in the assignment of recruits 

 so that organizations might be built in accordance with desir- 

 able intelligence specifications or, in the absence of such speci- 

 fications, so that their different constituent parts, such for 

 example as the companies of a regiment, should possess ap- 

 proximately the same mental strength, thus avoiding the 

 risk of weak links in the army chain; (4) for the prompt dis- 

 covery of men whose low grade intelligence or mental peculi- 

 arities rendered them of uncertain value in the army, and the 

 assignment of such individuals to development battalions for 

 observation and preliminary training; (5) for the discovery 

 and recommendation or assignment to labor battalions of 

 men obviously so inferior mentally as to be unsuitable for 

 regular military training, yet promising serviceableness in 

 simple manual labor; (6) for the discovery of men whose men- 

 tal inferiority unfitted them for any sort of military duty and 

 whose rejection or discharge should therefore be recommended 



