mended by Major Fowler to eighty-two; the
number of replacement stream courses open to Negroes fell from 48
percent of all courses offered to 19.8 percent. Fowler had expected to
follow up his study of school quotas in the Military Police, Signal
Corps, and Medical Corps with surveys of other schools figuring in the
Career Guidance Program, but since no additional overhead positions
were ever converted from white to black, no further need existed for
school quota studies. The three-point study suggested by Paul to find
ways to increase school quotas for Negroes was never made.

The War Department's problems with its segregation policy were only
intensified by its insistence on maintaining a racial quota. Whatever
the authors' intention, the quota was publicized as a guarantee of
black participation. In practice it not only restricted the number of
Negroes in the Army but also limited the number and variety of (p. 203)
black units that could be formed and consequently the number and
variety of jobs available to Negroes. Further, it restricted the
openings for Negroes in the Army's training schools.

[Illustration: BRIDGE PLAYERS, SEAVIEW SERVICE CLUB, TOKYO, JAPAN,
1948.]

At the same time, enlistment policies combined with Selective Service
regulations to make it difficult for the Army to produce from its
black quota enough men with the potential to be trained in those
skills required by a variety of units. Attracted by the superior
economic status promised by the Army, the average black soldier
continued to reenlist, thus blocking the enlistment of potential
military leaders from the increasing number of educated black youths.
This left the Army with a mass of black soldiers long in service but
too old to fight, learn new techniques, or provide leadership for the
future. Subject to charges of discrimination, the Army only fitfully
and for limited periods tried to eliminate low scorers to make room
for more qualified men. Yet to the extent to which it failed to
attract educated Negroes and provide them with modern military skills,
it failed to perform a principal function of the peacetime Army, that
of preparing a cadre of leaders for future wars.

In discussing the problem of low-scoring Negroes it should be
remembered that the Army General Classification Test, universally
accepted in the armed services as an objective device to measure
ability, has been seriously questioned by some manpower experts. (p. 204)