Want to 'Get Ahead' in the Army?

OR those who want to get ahead in the armed forces, both these publications should be of some help. They assume you want to get ahead. They also assume you want to get ahead. They also assume that clean-cut young man who is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, and displays the other virtues will be found out by his superiors.

As "Practice for the Army Tests" put it: "To get the job you want or to become an officer you don't have to be a college graduate, belong to 'society' or exert political influence." To the uninitiated reader, both manuals picture armed services in which every man is continually taking tests by which he rises rapidly upward to the proper level in the job for which he is most suited. The theory is beautiful.

Since most readers of this review are prospective college graduates and may even have a bit of "political influence" to exert here or there, these books are not aimed at them. Yet they can be helpful--their usefulness being in inverse proportion to the amount of knowledge a man facing induction or enlistment already has about the services.

"How to Get Ahead in the armed Forces" concerns itself not only with tests, but claims to give the word on how to get promotions, commissions, or the particular kind of job for which you are most suited. It also gives hints on what your attitude toward military life should be if you are going to "get ahead," and suggests ways that experience gained in service can be useful later in civilian life. Actually the book supplies little information that the veteran of one month will not have learned through intuition or barrack room gossip: But as a handy reference work for the novitiate, this book gathers information that otherwise isn't easily come by.

The other booklet, "Practice for the Army Tests," contains test questions mostly aimed at preparing you for the Army General Classification Test, but it should also be useful practice for the basic tests given by all branches of service. While most questions asked on such tests are elementary, and some are so mechanical that no preparation is possible, a few hours refresher is "Ratio and Proportion Problems" or "Graph and Chart Analysis" shouldn't hurt the AGCT score of any non-math concentrator. And then there are those exasperating "Cube Counting" and "Cube Turning" problems which some pre-test practice would make slightly less nerve-shattering.

If you really want to get ahead in one of the armed services and haven't yet been to see your Congressman, surely these books will do you no harm