Serenity I: Agreeable Disagreement

I have been deriving much inspiration and comfort from a re-reading of Alistair Cooke's Letters from America. Mr Cooke was of course a man whom my parents held up as a role-model to me from a very early age, and his Letters were a nonpareil among the journalistic broadcasts of all time.

Recently, I have been moved to quote (and not the first time) a line from one of his Letters. This is from 7 Dec 1956, a long time before I was born.

"What I admire most in a man is his serenity of spirit... when he fights, he fights in the manner of a gentleman fighting a duel, not in that of a longshoreman cleaning out a waterfront saloon."

In all my life, I have tried to follow this principle of disagreement. I have always duelled like a gentleman, and not come after someone like a lout. It is this essential characteristic that distinguishes, in my mind, the spirit of a true leader — a scholar, an officer, and a gentleman — from the ersatz variety that we only too often find in charge of our venerable institutions.