gement principles, and to assist their men to plan their
professional careers. The opportunities and the job qualifications can
be described. Also, somewhat more thoroughly than is done in civil
life, the establishment's system of record-keeping throws a partial
light on the aptitudes of the individual. The qualified man is soon
known by his "spec number" or maybe two numbers. It might seem
therefore that things are so well-regulated that the prospect of
every man finding his niche is better than even.

The fact remains that the majority of individuals spend the greater
part of their lives doing something other than that which would bring
out their best quality and give them the greatest satisfaction, mainly
because accident, in one form or another, put them into a particular
channel, and inertia kept them there.

A boy builds model airplanes. His hobby being a force in his youthful
years, he becomes a pilot, and then discovers to his shocked amazement
that he does not have his heart in machines but in the management of
men. A man who has lived his life among guns, and who enjoys the feel
and the working of them, enters the service and permits himself to be
made a food procurement specialist, having run that kind of business
in civil life only because he had inherited it from his father. An
officer assigned to a weapons detail finds it hard going. And the fact
that he takes a delight in writing a good paper still does not signal
to him that this is his main field and he should exploit it to the
fullest!

To what do these things point? In particular, to this, that despite
all of the help which may be provided by outside agencies, finding the
straight thoroughfare in work is mainly a problem of searching
self-examination and personal decision. The impression which any other
person may have of our talents and possibilities is largely formed by
what we say, think and feel about ourselves.

This does not require that constant introspection which is found in
Cecil Forester's nervous hero, "Captain Horatio Hornblower." That man
doubtless would have died of stomach ulcers before winning his second
stripe. It is not a matter of, "How do I look to someone else?" but
of, "What do I know about myself?" The kind of work which one likes
best and does with the greatest facility, the avocational study which
is pursued because it provides greater delight than an encharged
responsibility, the talent which one had as a youth but was d