• Author: Unknown
• Editor:
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 5 1 1918
• Tags:
• advice
• confidence

GENERAL FOCH—AND US

General Foch says ‘‘A battle lost is a battle you think you can’t win,” and we are most heartily in accord with the distinguished General who is now the hope of Democracy. It is evidenced in our ewn life; in the lives of the majority of our number, that that is just our trouble: we doubt our own powers of attainment, we look up at the heights where other men walk in strength, and freedom, and we wish heartily to be there but the thought of the climbing that will be necessary confounds us, and we say ‘‘we’ll surely fall, so what’s the use of trying, anyway?’’ and somebody else becomes the Governor, or Bank President we should have been. We were licked before we started; and all for the lack of confidence.

Confidence is more than half the battle; to be sure you’re going to win is to lower the odds against you to a vanishing point, and the first thing you know, Sunday School Superintendent’s are using you as a shining, instead of a horrible example. But if that little feeling of doubt persists, and you think you’d best go down around Vine St. and consult a Brazilian Queen, or a Hindu Swami about the matter; and probably have them tell you that your uncle who ran away from home 38 years ago, and was never heard of again, now owns half Australia, and is sure to remember you in his will, or that your fortunes are all bound up with a blonde heiress who is certain to come into your life before you can develop a bald-spot, why, what chance have you?

You sit down to wait the happy event, while Opportunity clamors at your door unheard, to finally heave a weary sigh, and go around the corner to visit that red-headed Jones boy, whom you always rather despised for having his hands and clothing all work stained, and for going to night-school, or staying at home nights for study, instead of being a ‘‘regular fellow’’—as you were—and going down town to help support a corner lamp-post, or the proprietor of a pool-room, and then coming here to tell Tom Collins he never had a chance. Licked before you started!

We couldn’t possibly end this better, than by quoting General Foch some more, this time from his immortal dispatch to Gen. Joffre at the Battle of the Marne—‘‘My right has been rolled up, my left has been driven back, my center has been smashed. I have ordered an advance from all directions.’’