TACT AND PUSH

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 188, 29 October 1927, Page 10

TACT AND PUSH

HOW FAR DO THEY GO? Dr. F. C. Bartlett has been maintaining: before the British Association that tact will take a man much farther than cleverness, and that a ‘ton of learning” is not as good as an “ounce of pushfulness.” There is no doubt much to be said for this argument, but I wonder whether it is really a sound one. It seems to me that tact—the kind of tact which gets one on—is itself a form of cleverness, and that though pushfulness may help one to get a start there must be something behind it if the start is to be of any value, writes John Blunt in the “Daily Mail.”

It is true that both tact and pushfulness often impress mankind, but it is also true that many charming and energetic people turn out to be failures. In certain persons—we have all met the d.ype—such surface qualities are a mere cloak to the emptiness of their minds. They are always on the verge of success because they are always being given chances, but everything always ends in disappointment because they are inevitably found out before long.

It is not the showy qualities that really “count.” Even those people who possess both solid abilities and showy qualities are apt to be misjudged because there are so many other people who possess only the latter. Many a man is not taken sufficiently serious simply because he gives the impression of being a trifler or an advertiser.

I do not for a moment want to decry tact or proper pushfulness, but I do think it is a fatal mistake to rely upon them too much. There is a tendency among the young men of to-day to think that if they are agreeable and glib they have half won the battle of

life. But battles are not won by mieh easy methods. Tact may be charming but useless; energy may be terrific but misdirected.

The truth is that brains and personality still rule the world. Without character a man of brilliance frequently goes up and out like a rocket, and without intelligence a man of character may plod in the same rut for years. It is when the two things are combined in one person that the doors of success are thrown open. For one may be sure that when they are thus combined solid achievement will result. After all, it is acts and not words 'hat matter, and the whole world rests upon the capacity of mankind for work. Any astute person will be taken at his own valuation for a short period, but no one can continue indefinitely to “spoof” his fellows.