Personal advancement, within any worthwhile system, requires some sacrifice of leisure, and more careful attention to the better organization of one's working routine. But that does not entail heroic self-sacrifice or the forfeiting of any of life's truly enduring rewards. It means putting the completion of work ahead of golf and bridge. It means rejecting the convenient excuse for postponing solution of the problem until the next time. It means cultivating the mind during hours that would otherwise be spent in idleness. It means concentrating for longer periods on the work at hand without getting up from one's chair. But after all, these things do not require an extraordinary faculty. The ability of the normal man to concentrate his thought and effort are mainly the product of a personal conviction that concentration is necessary and desirable. Abbé Dimnet said: "Concentration is supposed to be exceptional only because people do not try and, in this, as in so many things, starve within an inch of plenty." And as to the mien and manner which will develop from firm commitments, another wise Frenchman, Honore Balzac, added this: "Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay." Here is a great part of the secret. It is in the exercise of the will that the men are separated from the boys, and that the officer who is merely anxious for advancement is put apart from the one who is truly ambitious to succeed in his life calling. Even a lazy-minded superior, in judging of his subordinates, will rarely mistake the one condition for the other. When within the services we hear the highest praise reserved for the man "with character," that is what the term means--application to duty and thoroughness in all undertakings, along with that maturity of spirit and judgment which comes by precept, by kindness, by study, by watching, and above all, by example. The numerous American commanders from all services who have been accorded special honor because they rose from the ranks have invariably made their careers by the extra work, self-denial and rigor which the truly good man does not hesitate to endure. The question facing every young officer is whether he, too, is willing to walk that road for the rewards, material and spiritual, which will surely attend it. There is of course that commonest of excuses for rejecting the difficult and taking life easy. "I haven't time!" But for the man who keeps his mind on the object, there is always time. Figure it out! About us in the services daily we see busy men who somehow manage to find time for whatever is worth doing, while at the adjoining desks are others with abundant leisure who can't find time for anything. When something important requires doing, it is usually the busy man who gets the call.