AFVOA Newletters of Year 2002

Page 58 of 84 ARMED FORCES VETERAN OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION CHENNAI (Established 1994) Patron: Lt Gen C Sundara Rao, PVSM, President Maj Gen N Viswanathan Vice President Col N Viswanathan Secretary Col A Krishnaswami, VrC, VSM** No 5 of 2002 NEWSLETTER #05/2002 22 nd Sep 2002 Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honour, I lose myself. ~ Willia m Shakespeare ~ (1564 – 1616) (British Playwright Actor, (poet) Dear Veteran, From the Editor’s Desk 1. Most of us have possibly studied Shakespeare during some stage of our student lives. Hence the above saying would be all too familiar. Honesty is said to be one of the primary qualities of a leader. Today, this seems to be a fast diminishing virtue. One may attribute this to lack of moral values in society, forgetting that it is we, who make the community. And as the saying goes that charity begins at home, honesty also has to be practised, taught and imbibed commencing from the home. 2. Recently, I was fortunate to attend the presentation of accoutrements to the cadets who were being commissioned into the Corps of Signals from the OTA. Maj Gen DK Bewtra had flown in from Army Headquarters to take part in the function. After the presentation, Gen Bewtra congratulated the cadets and stressed that it was most important that they should practice honesty not only throughout their service career but also for the rest of their lives. Honesty was not to be restricted to financial matters alone, but should be seen in its wider perspective. Honesty was a commitment to one self. If one was late for an appointment, then one was not being honest. If one did not perform to one’s potential, then also it could be termed that one was being dishonest to oneself! In other words, honesty should be practised not to satisfy anyone else but to be true to one’s own conscience – not just in financial matters, but in everything that one does. 3. In this context, it is worthwhile remembering the American Educator Horace Mann who has this to say: “ Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person’s money as his time.” Meeting Gone By - “An Impression” by Wg Cdr Ravi Mani A nation is a body of people who have done great things together in the past and hope to do great things together in the future. ~ Frank Underhill