trifles in mixed companies, to amuse myself and conform
to custom. But I would take care not to venture for sums which if I
won I would not be the better for, but if I lost, should be under a
difficulty to pay."

CHAPTER EIGHT

GETTING ALONG WITH PEOPLE

The main answer can be stated almost as simply as doing right-face.
Hear this:

If you like people, if you seek contact with them rather than hiding
yourself in a corner, if you study your fellow men sympathetically, if
you try consistently to contribute something to their success and
happiness, if you are reasonably generous with your thoughts and your
time, if you have a partial reserve with everyone but a seeming
reserve with no one, if you work to be interesting rather than spend
to be a good fellow, you will get along with your superiors, your
subordinates, your orderly, your roommate and the human race.

It is easy enough to chart a course for the individual who is wise
enough to make human relationships his main concern. But getting the
knack of it is sufficiently more difficult that it is safe to say more
talk has been devoted to this subject than to any other topic of
conversation since Noah quit the Ark. From Confucius down to Emily
Post, greater and lesser minds have worked at gentling the human race.
By the scores of thousands, precepts and platitudes have been written
for the guidance of personal conduct. The odd part of it is that
despite all of this labor, most of the frictions in modern society
arise from the individual's feeling of inferiority, his false pride,
his vanity, his unwillingness to yield space to any other man, and his
consequent urge to throw his own weight around. Goethe said that the
quality which best enables a man to renew his own life, in his
relation to others, is that he will become capable of renouncing
particular things at the right moment in order warmly to embrace
something new in the next.

That is earthy advice for any member of the officer corps. For who is
regarded as the strong man in the service--the individual who fights
with tooth and nail to hold to a particular post or privilege? Not at
all! Full respect is given only to him who at all times is willing to
yield his space to a worthy successor, because of an ingrained
confidence that he can succeed as greatly in some other sphere.

For a fresh start in this study of getting along with people, we could
not do better than quote what was published some time