OPPORTUNITY CALLS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 185, 6 August 1936, Page 11

OPPORTUNITY CALLS

PERSEVERANCE WINS. Helpful wise thoughts were spoken recently by Lord Blender, president of the Chartered Accountant Students’ Society of London, at the annual meeting of the organisation. “In the hurrying life of to-day with its clamour, its excitements and its restlessness, there is an impatience only too often shown to the old ways of perseverance and steadiness in becoming master of one’s craft,” he said. “Young men are often in too great a hurry to seize the rewards which older men have won after long years of effort, and they get discouraged if they have to work and wait. They are apt to complain of not having equality of opportunity. This is wrong. To everyone opportunity comes, if only his eyes are open and he is fit ready to seize it; but impatience brings it no nearer and a mind that it resentful is not suited to preparation for the chance when it arises. Let us remember that, as a rule, we are very ordinary people, following a not unworthy profession, which may not yield the glittering prizes of some other callings. But it has its rewards —it offers means of service, it meets a public want and is a protection to the public and its members can serve the State or their cities, though not in spectacular fashion. “We have already civil equality and the abolition of privilege, but that is not enough for a school of thought which desires material equality. That view strikes at the root of our national life and the individuality of man, and if equality of opportunity has any such meaning it will fail. I refer to this, as some of you may think that opportunities are unequal in our occupation. My belief, and I speak from observation aid experience, is that there are excellent opportunities and they lie within reach. If you fail, it is not for lack of opportunity, but because the qualities to which I have referred have not been cultivated. It is, in fact, largely personality which counts in all professions. “Clients expect much in these days and they want assistance outside pure auditing and accountancy. If their accountant is a man of wide business experience, a student of economic problems and an observer of the currents of trade and industry—national and international—he may be able to give his clients considered opinions which they will appreciate, though they may not always accept them. What we all require to do is to render, as far as we can, assistance in whatever form we feel able to give it. If we do not, the client may be disappointed and go elsewhere.”