MORALE IN PEACE.
(By Wilbur Nesbit.)
There's one thing to be said in favour of war —it is getting us acquainted with a lot of new words. Words with a punch in them —wor lo ' with a wallop in them. Right am j words you might call them. One of these words is "morale." It is about teh best word the war has given iv "Morale" is a sort of high toned word for' "team work"—but it means a lot more than team work. Anyhow "team work," like "efficiency" has jecn mouthed and written and pirated so much that it lacks the ambition <t once had. So along conies the war and gives us "morale." "Morale" means that I believe in you and you believe in me, and we believe in all the rest of the bunch, and all of us believe together that the crowd of us can do the work better and quicker han anybody else anywhere. Mo- { rale means a whole lot more than simply that we believe these things. It means that we make good on our belief. It means that I don't sit down at my desk, or lean against a wall somewhere, and think dark green thoughts about the fellow upstairs or the fellows over in the other departments. It means that you don't grouch around and tell yourself that I am dumping about half my work on to your shoulders and that I have'got a pull with the boss or I never could hold my job down. It means that we are all so busy and so glad watching the way the whole outfit is putting the thing over that there isn't any room in our systems for self-pity or for knocks on the others. It means that the sight of you and the way you are digging into your task puts 50 per cent more pep into me—makes me feel that no matter what is ahead of me it can't beat me, because I've got all the rest of the crowd behind me and with me.
Morale means—why it means friendship, after all.. Just plain everyday, common or garden horse sense friendship, geared up to the motor of earnestness and applied belief. A business organisation is just like an army—if it hasn't the right sort of morale, you can't make it, you can't borrow it—'you've got to have it.
And if you have it you'll make any Hindenburg line in the world look like a chalk mark after an eraser has been swept over it.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19190902.2.45
Bibliographic details
Northern Advocate, 2 September 1919, Page 4
Word Count
423MORALE IN PEACE. Northern Advocate, 2 September 1919, Page 4
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