ARNOLD BENNETT ON GOOD WILL

Evening Star, Issue 19327, 13 August 1926, Page 3

ARNOLD BENNETT ON GOOD WILL

Good will is a mental habit, and, like all good habits, is very difficult to form. Bad habits form themselves with tho utmost ease; good habits are the very deuce to start going. You have to begin them afresh every hour of every day for about fifty years, writes Mr Arnold Bennett, in the London 1 Sunday Express.' Good will is not accomplished by a single grand, vague, gesture. It is the cumulative produce" of a. million tiny, separate, tiresome, tedious efforts. It must not depend on what the other fellow does, or wait till ho begins. There can be no “ ifs ” about it. Still more important, it can be nothing but an empty aspiration until circumstances arise which render it really difficult to put into performance. Wc journey down to the factory or the office, and wc are bursting with good will. We smile wc deliberately adopt a benevolent, accommodating tone, wo work hard, we help others to work hard, and think proudly how splendid it all is. And then someone docs something that is manifestly, deliberately unjust, unkind, mischievous! Pouf! Wo jib at once. We say: “Really! This is too much! Really! This person is not playing the game! It must bo stopped. Good will is all very well. . . .” At tho first demand on it good will has run awavl We arc so absurdly blind; wo cannot sec that unless something actually was too much, unless someone at some point did actually cease to play the game, there would be no field for’the exercise of our good will.