As Dale Carnegie—that most pragmatic of modern thinkers—once remarked: “ The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that: the really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligences; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.
According to Time Magazine of October 17, 1986, her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had long voiced a desire to visit the People’s Republic of China. But as long as Britain ruled a piece of Chinese territory, the crown colony of Hong Kong, such a journey was impossible. The 1984 Sino-British agreement returning Hong Kong to China in 1997 provided the price of admission.
A dancer from South India, Sudha Chandran, was only sixteen years old when she broke her right leg in an accident on May 2, 1981. She was immediately taken to a local hospital. Without taking the necessary preliminary precautions, such as cleaning her wound and administering anti-tetanus injections, the doctors put her leg in plaster from thigh to toe. As the pain increased, her parents shifted her to a hospital in Madras. When the plaster was stripped off, it transpired that her leg had begun to blacken—a clear indication that infection had reached the bone and gangrene had set in.
By August 1945, Japan had been totally ruined having lost its political freedom as well as its economic stability. What Japan did subsequently was to refrain from touching the problem of political freedom and give its full thrust to economic stability. This policy proved so successful that Japan is today reckoned as an industrial super power. By 1990 Japan had already given five billion dollars credit to the world. It is estimated that by 1995 the amount of this credit will have increased to ten billion dollars.
