COOPERATION 841Ask any well-informed salesperson and they will tell you that
indecision is the outstanding weakness of the majority of people.
Every salesperson is familiar with that old excuse "I will think it
over," which is the last line of defense of those who do not have the
courage to say either yes or no. While they can't decide which way to
move, Time forces them into a corner where they can't move.
The great leaders of the world were people of quick decision.
General Grant had but little to commend him as an able general
except the quality of firm decision, but this was sufficient to offset
all of his weaknesses. The whole story of his military success may be
gathered from his reply to his critics when he said, "We will fight it
out along these lines if it takes all summer:'
When Napoleon Bonaparte reached a decision to move his armies
in a given direction, he permitted nothing to cause him to change that
decision. If his line of march brought his soldiers to a ditch dug by
his opponents to stop him, he would give the order to charge the ditch
until it had been filled with dead men and horses sufficient to bridge it.
The suspense of indecision drives millions of people to failure.
A condemned man once said that the thought of his approaching
execution was not so terrifying once he had reached the decision in
his own mind to accept the inevitable.
The lack of decision is the chief stumbling block of all revival-
meeting workers. Their entire work is to get men and women to reach
a decision in their own minds to accept a given religious tenet. Billy
Sunday once said, "Indecision is the devil's favorite tool."
Andrew Carnegie visualized a great steel industry, but that industry
would not be what it is today had he not reached a decision in his own
mind to transform his vision into reality.
James J. Hill saw, in his mind's eye, a great transcontinental rail-
way system, but that railroad never would have become a reality had
he not reached a decision to start the project.