e any personal ingenuity in making life interesting for
his family. It is all good enough for those who must have it, but it
is well for an officer to remember that the greater the accumulation,
the less his chance of accommodating his personal establishment to the
requirements of the service. All moves are costly, even though the
government pays most of the freight.

For these and many other reasons, the habit of systematic saving is an
essential form of career insurance. The officer who will not deprive
himself of a few luxuries to build up a financial reserve is as
reckless of his professional future as the one who in battle commits
his manpower reserve to front-line action without first weighing his
situation.

In the old days, keeping up with the Joneses was almost a part of
service tradition. If the colonel's lady owned a bob-tailed nag, the
major's wife could be satisfied with nothing less than a bay. And so
on and on. Things are no longer that way. They have become much more
sensible.

There is one other kind of credit--the professional credit which an
officer is entitled to keep with his own establishment. Junior
officers are entitled to know that which their superiors are often
too forgetful to tell them--that if they have made some especially
distinct and worthy contribution to the service, it belongs in the
permanent record. If, for example, an officer has written part of a
manual, or sat on a major board or committee or provided the idea
which has resulted in an improvement of materiel, the fact should be
noted in the 201 file, or its equivalent. Such things are not done
automatically, as many an officer has learned too late and to his
sorrow. But any officer is within propriety in asking this
acknowledgment from his responsible superior.

The legal assistance office in an officer's immediate organization
will usually suffice his needs in the drawing of all papers essential
to his personal housekeeping.

To make a will is merely good business practice, and to neglect it
simply because one's holdings are small is to postpone forming the
habits which mark a responsible person. Because of superstition and a
reluctance to think about death, about three out of every four
Americans die intestate. That is about as foolish as leading men into
battle without designating a second in command. The Armed Services
counsel all officers to take the more responsible view, and make it
easy for their officers to do thi