Quiz Flunked

New York's Representative Walter Gresham ("Ham") Andrews ought to know as much about the Army as anyone in Congress. A Princeton man ('13), a major of infantry and winner of the D.S.C. in World War I, he has spent most of his 17 years in Congress on military committees. He is now chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Nevertheless, last week he flunked an Army General Classification Test for enlisted men.

Ohio's portly Clarence Brown, contending that Army qualification standards are too high, gave Andrews the quiz.

Brown: "I want to see whether you can qualify for an enlisted man."

Andrews: "I will take my chances."

Brown: "This is the first question: angle A of the triangle ABC is 40 degrees and angle B is 60 degrees. How many degrees in angle C?"

Andrews: "Please repeat the question."

Brown repeats.

Andrews: "Eighty. [Then hesitantly], Is that correct?"

Brown: "How many degrees of a circle graph would you shade to show that 10% of all men in the Army smoke some form of tobacco?"

Andrews (flustered): "I think I would flunk that question."

Brown: "What is the definition of the word 'torsion'?"

Andrews: "I do not know."

Brown: "What is the definition of the word 'recondite'?"

Andrews: "I cannot say."

At the end of the quiz, Congressman Brown asserted that Chairman Andrews had missed all the questions.

Next morning, after a sleepless, studious night, Ham Andrews returned to the fray. He accused Brown of: (i) reading questions from a 1942 test; 2) not giving him the multiple choices which the test provided; 3) reading only questions at the end of the test, which, said Princetonian Andrews, only Harvard men are supposed to answer. And furthermore, he added: "I got the first one right."-

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