On Present Danger

A young man with twenty-eight middle names enlisted in the U. S. Navy the other day. This presented a problem, since there was no room to list them all in the appropriate blanks on the necessary forms. The Navy solved the problem rather neatly: it substituted for the twenty-eight middle names the letters "NMI," which signify "no middle initial."

This method of dealing with problems has certain attractions, but it can lead to serious difficulty. We hope that it is not a foretaste of the American military mind of the future. Some things are not so easily denied as twenty-eight middle names.