IT IS only natural that we should ask ourselves at this time what lessons can be drawn from the vast language-training program initiated by the Army during the war. Although many treatments of the subject already have been published, there still seems to be room for further discussion. The present article is based mainly on the experience gained at Stanford University with the Army Specialized Training Program, Civil Affairs Training School, and special Signal Corps language courses, with which the author, a member of the regular language staff of that university, has been closely associated for the last few years. First of all: What can we learn from the army programs to improve our methods and organization in the college language curriculum? How much of the experience gained can be made useful for civilian teaching? Before we can begin to answer these questions we must examine the Army programs themselves more carefully and critically. Only after we have determined the special conditions and purposes prevailing in them, can we obtain a sound basis on which to build. The aim of most Army language courses, both in the Army Specialized Training Program and the Civil Affairs Training School, was to impart a good command of the spoken language. There were courses in which reading and writing were stressed, but they represented specialized work and occupied comparatively small groups. In general, the oral command was the chief goal. Naturally, the Army was not primarily interested in long-term educational or cultural values that might accrue from the learning of a foreign language. Only the immediate usefulness of the language was considered, because it was to be employed as a weapon or a tool with which to help our troops to fight the enemy more effectively or to maintain peace more securely. Granting the limited objective of the Army programs, we may well ask, were these courses really effective? Did they actually obtain their goal? On the whole, this question can be answered emphatically in the affirmative. To be sure, mistakes were made: by the Army authorities who sometimes issued directives without adequate knowledge of the subject; by the teachers who could not adjust quickly enough to the desired methods and techniques. Classes were suddenly discontinued before they reached any degree of language efficiency; the