Word: tactfulness
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Back in the days of Tyre and Nineveh, in ancient Rome and more ancient Greece, the waiters in the early versions of the Stork Club presented checks face down to the customers, as a matter of courtesy and tact. The custom has held good down through the ages, with waiter trainees being admonished by their professors that it is a cardinal faux pas in cabaret etiquette to offer the "tab" facing boldly...
...Germans had locked themselves in for privacy, the firemen found themselves locked out. Ankara's swank Karpic Restaurant was the scene of an embarrassing incident. Just as slick German Ambassador (and Spy-Master) Franz von Papen entered, the orchestra was beating out Pistol Packin-Mama. With truly Turkish tact, it slid with few fumbles into the Merry Widow Waltz...
...officials counted up their chips. French diplomats and the General himself were pleased by the full red-carpet treatment he had been given-everything short of recognition as the head of the French Government. On their part, U.S. officials were relieved that General de Gaulle had conducted himself with tact...
When U.S. commanders in Britain, addressing soldiers, are so brilliantly devoid of tact that they make discomforting headlines, British officialdom must pay attention. Last week the British censor's office in London asked British newspaper editors and foreign correspondents not to report speeches by Allied "senior officers" to troops henceforth without an okay from the censor...
...lordliest convoys in history (they carried the British and Americans to Africa). There are some eye-shattering shots of combat, too. The film was made with care and skill, but the intricate military story is told too doggedly, with too much commentary. A general high-surface of tact and politeness reduces the film's forces as a record of truth. Most unfortunate touch is the finale between the off-screen voices of a British and a U.S. soldier philosophizing vaguely about the postwar world, signing off with a glad, excruciating: "Wot a job! Bringin' back the smiles...