The Original "Pioneer" Building at Allahabad. The Kipling Journal. The Organ of the Kipling Society. QUARTERLY No. 29 MARCH, 1934 Contents. Plate : The original " Pioneer " building at Allahabad. News and Notes ...... 1 Rudyard Kipling as a Patriot 22 Reviews and New Books ... 10 Kipling Prices Current ... 31 U.S.C. Old Boys' Luncheon... 11 Secretary's Announcements... 31 The Other Kipling ...... 12 News and Notes. THE Second Meeting of the Session was held on Wednesday evening, December 27th, at the Rembrandt Hotel. Miss Pamela Frankau was the speaker, and a large number were present to enjoy her lecture. The Chairman, Lt.-Col. R. V. K. Applin, D.S.O., M.P., in introducing the speaker, said: "I have a pleasant duty to-night in introducing someone whom you already know very very well indeed. Miss Frankau is well known to the Society, and her distinguished father even more so. We all remember that delightful lecture that he gave in which his daughter, I think, dotted his i's and crossed his t's for him. To-night Miss Frankau is going to give us a talk on "The Other Kipling." Who the "other Kipling" is I have not yet discovered, but we shall know in a few moments. It is a very great pleasure to us to have distinguished members who are able to give their time to come and talk to us, and we have no more distinguished member in the literary world than Miss Frankau. I will now call on her to address us." A programme of songs and recitations followed the lecture. Miss Nancy Price, Director of the People's National Theatre, who has recently joined the Society, delighted all by reciting "The Story of Uriah," "Mother o' Mine," and "L'Envoi" (Seven Seas) ; the last piece was given to a musical accompani- ment composed and played by her husband, Colonel Maude. Her artistic rendering of the poems was very greatly appre- 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. ciated. The New London Singers, under the direction of Mr. Arthur A. Paramor, gave the following quartets very effec- tively:—"The Sweepers" and "Fate's Discourtesy" (Ed. Elgar), and "The Camel's Hump" and "Rolling down to Rio" (Ed. German). Miss Rita Harris, a member of the "Singers" sang "A Tree Song" (Florence Aylward) and "Night Song in the Jungle" (Dora Bright), while Mr. Roland Clack, another member of the party, sang "On the Road to Mandalay" (Hedgecock) and "Submarines" (Ed Elgar). Mr. Paramor played the accompaniments in his usual brilliant manner. Mr. Grammer proposed and Mr. C. Richardson seconded a vote of thanks to the lecturer, who had given "excellent fare for this Christmas treat." A vote of thanks to the entertainers was proposed by Mrs. Noble Partridge and seconded by Mr. Mackenzie Skues. A most cheery and enjoyable meeting then closed with the singing of God Save the King. X X X X X The Third Meeting of the Session was held on Wednesday afternoon, February 14th, at the Rubens Hotel ; Mr. E. E. Harbord, acting for Colonel Bailey who was unavoidably absent, announced that Major-General J. D. McLachlan, who was to have been in the Chair, was unfortunately prevented from attending, and that his place would be taken by Commander Locker-Lampson, who had very kindly stepped into the breach at very short notice. Commander Locker-Lampson said that as he had just come from the House of Commons, where he had heard enough speaking during the last 24 hours to justify his silence, he would only call on the lecturer, the Rev. H. P. Kennedy Skipton, who had been many years in India and had served originally in the Indian Police. Illness prevented both the Rev. W. Lushington and Mr. Dale Smith from appearing. The place of the former was taken by Mr. Bazley, who recited " The River's Tale " and " Smoke-in-the-Eyes " (uncollected), in his usual delightful manner ; the audience expressed their enjoyment in no uncertain terms. Mr. Charles Miller appeared instead of the latter and gave great pleasure by his renderings of three Edward German settings—" Of All the Tribe of Tegumai," " I Keep Six Honest Serving Men," and " Merrow Down," and " Hunting Song of THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 3 the Seonee Pack," by Eric Fogg; he has a voice with both quality and power, and his phrasing was most artistic. Mr. Denis Benwell proved an able accompanist. The Chairman proposed a vote of thanks to the lecturer and coupled with this the name of Mr. Harbord; he also expressed his regret at the absence of Colonel Bailey. Mr. Brooking, in seconding the vote of thanks, said that he thought a cleric was the right person to deal with Kipling, as no one knew more about the Bible than Kipling; he added that Kipling would eventually be quoted by us as unconsciously as we quote Shakespeare. He also thanked the Chairman for coming to the Meeting at such short notice, and said that he was sure they all were sorry that Colonel Bailey was not there. The vote of thanks was carried with acclamation. In reply, Mr. Kennedy Skipton said that he thanked all present for their cordial reception, especially Mr. Beresford for the light he had thrown on the school at Westward Ho ! The proceedings were then terminated with the singing of " God Save the King." X X X X X Out illustration shows the bungalow at Allahabad, in which ' The Pioneer" was first printed in 1865. When the new Press Building was erected at that city the old building was, it is believed, used as a residence by Kipling, and in it he is sup- posed to have written most of his early contributions which appeared in "The Pioneer." As a second supplement members will find an index for the year 1933 ; it is hoped to make this an annual feature. X X X X X "Our Empire, her peace, her power, her security." At the request of Mr. L. S. Amery, M.P., and Sir Frank Fox, on behalf of the Over-Seas League, Mr. Kipling wrote the above simple and suitable toast for the British Empire. It is said that steps will be taken to secure the official adoption of these words as a toast to the Empire for all appropriate occasions. X X X X X Here are two rather amusing parodies, the first on the inevitable "If" from the Northampton Chronicle: 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. If you can drive through crowds without a falter, And miss pedestrians by an inch or two ; If you can wear a smile that nought will alter, When five or ten-ton lorries lurch at you ; If you can see your wings and mud-guards crumpled, And greet the men that do it with a grin, You'll have no trouble driving through the city ; And you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. The second deals with the proposed amenities on the out- skirts of Brighton; it is on "Sussex" from the pen of Mr. E. A. Bunyard in a letter to the Times, sent to us by a member, Miss V. A. Tootal: Here through the new cemented ways The barking motor thrills, And track promoters praise the Lord Who made these useful hills. So here the new gods lead us on To profitable ends, The heathen Kingdom Wilfred found Now pays us dividends. X X X X X On February 6th, Miss Nancy Price, Director of the People's National Theatre, invited members of the Society to a reading of Kipling poems ; this very interesting and delight- ful entertainment was given at 5.45 p.m. at the Vaudeville Theatre, and for some forty minutes the audience were en- thralled by the reciter's wonderful interpretation of a very varied and comprehensive choice of poems. The programme included pieces like "The Bell Buoy" and "The Old Men" ; 'Mandalay" and "Recessional"; "Mother o' Mine," "The Ballad of "Fisher's Boarding House" and "The Story of Uriah." Miss Price conveyed to her hearers the infinite pathos of "The Power of the Dog" and "My Boy Jack" ; she was equally successful in her rendering of the comedy in "Mary's Son," while the very difficult verse, "Boots," was absolutely made to live. By way of relief to some of the more serious poems, Miss Price gave us "The Sergeant's Wedding" in a rich vein of low comedy, making this last piece a perfect triumph. It is a pity that more of our readers could not have THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 5 been present, as this was one of those rare opportunities of getting the inner meaning of certain poems. With the excep- tion of a small collection to defray expenses, no charge was made for this most enjoyable reading. X X X X X We have received two interesting extracts from the Mail and Empire, of Toronto. The first, under date November 30th, 1933, is a letter to the Editor :—"Last night as I walked along the street I passed a happy youth singing 'Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,' and I thought to myself, that's '0 Rare Ben Jonson' alive again, after 300 years. And so 300 years hence, in my opinion, some youth will pass by singing 'On the Road to Mandalay' (et Al.). The magic of Kipling will stir the hearts of that generation as he does those of this generation, for Kipling, in my humble opinion, is immortal. I wonder if the Editor will agree with this." The Editor replies :—"The answer is in the affirmative. Sir John Willison once said that 30 years hence Rudyard Kipling will be regarded throughout the British Empire much as Shakespeare is to-day." The second extract with the date of December 30th, 1933, is a leading article expressing birthday greetings to Mr. Kipling, from which we cull the following :—"It may be said that he has been all things to all men, women and children. All round the world the men who move mountains have enjoyed and still enjoy 'The Sons of Martha.' But nothing short of an encyclopedia would be required to list Mr. Kipling's writings or to elaborate his Shakespeare-like versatility." X X X X Our member Mr. Bernard Collitt, sends a Kipling letter from the Daily Star of Montreal for January 6th ; this was addressed to Mrs. James F. Munro, who had written a poem called "Daughters of Martha," and gives his own explanation of "The Sons of Martha." The letter reads as follows :— Burwash, Etchingham, Sussex. Dear Madam—Thank you very much for yours of the 8th, and the lines to Martha. I have always been puzzled over that incident, but it seems to me that since Our Lord was an Oriental (qua humanity) and His disciples were poor when he said to Martha, 'But one thing is needful,' He means 'there is no need 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. to make a fuss for us. We are simple folk. One thing, i.e., dish, is all that we need.' That would be the common meal of one course round, which guests sat and dipped into. A second 'dish' of course meant much trouble and fresh trays. Afterwards, as I suggest have (lacunae) misread the value of the word 'thing' and have read into Our Lord's gentle reproof and suggestion that Mary need not be hurled into the domestic preparations too (for she was also an hostess) matters more weightier than were intended. Yours, most sincerely, (Signed) Rudyard Kipling. X X X X x Our energetic President has recently had a full page article entitled "At School with Rudyard Kipling" in the Manchester Evening News (29th December, 1933). Most of this article is identical with a Paper that he gave us in June, 1932, but it is noteworthy to see that all these facts have been given to the uninstructed and popular world who are not members of the Kipling Society. The interest aroused shows that the Dickens- like characterisation in "Stalky & Co." continues to keep that book in a prominent place in regard to matters dealing with school life, even though the United Services College may not have been a normal type of school. General Dunsterville again points out that "Stalky & Co." is not, as the public insist on saying, a boy's book : "Regard it if you like as a confession— a rather candid one." X X X X x We hear from Captain E. W. Martindell that one of our members, Mr. Ernest Maggs, was the prime mover in securing the Codex Sinaiticus for England. It may be hoped that some day the British Museum Library will possess complete copies of Kipling's uncollected work. X X X X X In an article called " Business and Finance " a U.S.A. journal named Time has some amusing sayings about the motor trade freely adapted from Kipling's most famous book : "Once a year in the full of the moon, according to Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, the amiable wolves of India gather in packs to THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 7 pass judgment on the year's crop of cubs. Forth from their lairs and into the shadow of the great Council Rock the she- wolves muzzle their young. . . Last week in Manhattan, like the mother-wolves of India, the motor makers of the U.S. pushed their new models into the shadow of the council rock that is the annual National Automobile Show. And with just as much eager pride as Kipling's she-wolves, the motor makers awaited the judgment of the buying public. If their models were accepted, they would lope happily in the annual spring running . . . The pack's curiosity in Mowgli, the wolf- suckled youth, was apathetic compared to the public's interest in the new Airflow Chryslers and De Sotos . . Manhattan crowds flocked to the 34th annual automobile in a buying mood and U.S. motormen had ample reason to expect good hunting when they left the council rock." X X X X X On January 17th, the Aeroplane printed Kipling's "The Truce of the Bear," with the following note:—"These verses, from 'The Five Nations' are published by specially given per- mission of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. They may be read as an allegory of Russia's attitude in drawing civilised Europe into trade agreements to-day." x x x x x We regret to learn that Mr. Frank Nelson Doubleday, the famous New York publisher, died in January at Miami, aged 72 years ; the beautiful work produced by his firm will be well- known to all collectors of Kipling's books. The standard U.S.A. edition of Kipling's works was, and is, an example of good taste, with the green cloth binding bearing a ship on the front cover, the artistic title-page and the attractive paper and type. Mr. Doubleday was known to his intimates by the nick- name of "Effendi," a title given him by Kipling, from the pronunciation of his initials. X X X X X Some extracts from the Christmas Supplement, 1933, of the Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore, may be new to many of our readers :—"It is but natural that the Civil and Military Gazette should pride itself on having been the literary nursery of a genius to whose vivid artistry, the whole English speaking world thrilled in his heyday, and whose name is, even after near 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. upon 50 years of excellent, indeed superlative work, one to arouse thrills of expectation for Kipling attained name and fame, with their accompanying rewards at about half the age of the literary giants of those days. The Punjab of his day was a land teeming with vivid incidents . . Memories of the great Mutiny were still vivid, told at first hand, and almost every- where could be found survivors of the army of the East India Company of whose reminiscences he made use in his tales and ballads, while the Afghan War was but two years past when he joined the paper, and the Burmese and Egyptian wars in pro- gress during his stay with it. In columns of this journal will be found all the germs of his early work and the ore he extracted from this rich mine he turned into gold by his consummate power of blending fact and fiction." Following this are three tales "that Kipling has left in their original seclusion in the files of the C. and M. No man is real judge of all his best work, and if these tales will not add to Kipling's reputation they can- not detract from it." The three tales are:—"The Shadow of His Hand," "New Brooms," and "The Burden of Nineveh." The first two are included in "Abaft the Funnel" ; the last has never been collected. Major W. M. Jenkins, of Rawalpindi, sends us these particulars. X X X X X There are signs that, among the educated, it will soon be held rather uncultivated not to have read Kipling. Opinions like that which follows are becoming more and more usual :— "I was talking with an elderly man who recalled Norwegian ice being shipped to England before the days of ice manufac- ture . . . when I got home I turned to Kipling's "Second Jungle Book" . . I hope some of you read Kipling. There have been attempts to shelve him as the propagandist of an Imperialist tradition that is out-moded, but don't allow your- selves to be deceived by any such nonsense. There are fine and widely varied things in Kipling." We are indebted for the above extract from the Yorkshire Evening Post of February 12th, to Mr. L. G. Thornber. X x . x x x Though second to none as a keen student of Kipling, our Founder, Mr. J. H. C. Brooking, by no means confines himself to a single hobby. He is also the Founder of the Proms Circle, THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 9 formed from regular attenders of the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts, to discuss the programmes at more suitable times and places than during the intervals between the items. It is excellent to hear that Mr. Brooking's other "child" is almost as flourishing as his first. X X X X X The Daily Gleaner, Jamaica, 30th December, 1933, con- tains a long article by Mr. R. T. Hopkins, author of several books dealing with Kipling and his work. Here may be read some curious statements :—"All he offers (presumably in 'Limits and Renewals') is a bundle of stories commemorating a series of boisterous practical jokes." Now, out of the four- teen tales that make up this collection, only four come under this heading. Further, we gather that "Mr. Kipling has never mixed with soldiers and sailors, tinkers and tailors . . his adventures with the outside world are all pen-and-ink adven- tures." " The swastika is the ' mystic cross of freemasonry.' " "What was the unattainable peak before him when he settled down to life on an Indian newspaper ? To see his verses printed in a slender pamphlet—that was all he wanted." Yet Kipling wrote five fairly large books in the following five years. The article concludes with about a column telling of Mr. Kipling's daily life at Burwash, but Jamaica is a long way from Sussex. X X X X x Mr. Agate's criticism is a little nearer home in many respects ; he gives a list of the people "I should choose for my Forty Neo-Georgians . . Rudyard Kipling, for being the world's greatest master of the short story and leaving Mau- passant and Tchehov to toss up for second place." The full list, which is worth looking over, appeared in the Daily Express for February 12th, 1934. X X X X X Here is another item for the "List of Kipling Poems Set to Music" :—"Sussex" by James R. Dear, published by Weekes & Co. 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. Reviews and New Books. Post-Bag Diversions elicited by E. V. Lucas (Methuen, 7/6). LIKE all Mr. Lucas's very charming anthologies, this is a book to read and to keep ; people put in letters what they omit in their literary work, so the result is very much a 'human document," as a certain late public character vised to say. There are several references to Kipling, including a long- letter from him to Mr. Lucas who had asked for the meaning of the line in "The Islanders" : "If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth?" Kipling's explanation is in- teresting and—unexpected. Lord Glenconner writes :—"I like very much the phrase of the Baboo English—'the writer who wrote like the Kipling or the Dickens'." This book is a worthy companion to "The Open Road" and "The Friendly Town." Of interest to all Old Boys and to readers of "Stalky & Co." is Major H. A. Tapp's United Services College 1874— 1911. Herein we find many good things: "Rabbits-Eggs" was a real character, by name Gregory; Kipling was very good at French, as well as English literature. There are some good letters from Old Boys, reproduced verbatim ; and an account of the leave-taking of Cormell Price, at which Kipling was present and spoke on behalf of the Old Boys. Altogether, this is a valuable and interesting record, quarto size, in cloth, containing over forty illustrations from photographs ; it is published at 6/6 (post free) and may be obtained from Messrs. Gale and Polden, Ltd., Wellington Works, Aldershot, to whom all orders should be sent, as the book is for private circulation only. Sir George MacMunn has recently given two books to the world : Prince Eugene, a history of the famous soldier, con- temporary and associate of Marlborough ; and Black Velvet, a Drama of India and the Bomb Cult, this latter being a kind of detective-adventure story. Both books have been very well received ; they are published by Sampson Low, Marston and Co., prices 10/6 and 7/6 respectively. Very shortly some new Kipling poems will appear. One is an Ode promised for the Victoria Centenary Celebrations at Melbourne, to mark the dedication of Victoria's Shrine of re- membrance on next Armistice Day. Then for the Pageant of THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 11 Parliament at the Albert Hall next summer Kipling has given three unpublished poems, two of which are to be used in the Elizabethan scene. U.S.C. Old Boys' Luncheon. By the Hon. Librarian. THROUGH the united efforts of Major H. A. Tapp and Mr. J. N. Sparks, a Luncheon was arranged for all Old Boys of the United Services College from 1874 onwards; it was held, by kind permission of the Club Committee, at the Officers' Club, Aldershot, on January 17th, 1934. Of the original number who accepted the invitation five, at the last moment, were prevented from attending:—C. L. Anderson ('74-'79) ; Lieut.-Col. R. B. Berkeley ('76-'83) ; Brig.-General Osborn ('83-'89) ; Major J. Stanford ('86-'96) ; and Captain L. U. Walker ('79-'80). The proceedings began with " call-over " taken by Mr. A. H. Gayer, the oldest Old Boy present—the first to go to the '' Coll." He was put in the Chair and after lunch proposed the following toasts : The King-Emperor ; Past Headmasters ; The Old Coll. and Old Comrades ; Major Tapp and Mr. Sparks. In a short speech Mr. Sparks, who holds the unique dis- tinction of being the only Old Boy who was also a Member of the School Council, expressed the hope that the Luncheon would be an annual event (applause). Major Tapp said that next September would mark the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the College; that thirty years ago, almost to the day, many of those present travelled down to Westward Ho ! for the last time by the 10.30 a.m. train from Waterloo, for it was in the Easter term of 1904 that the Coll. was moved to Harpenden. He went on to say that there were represen- tatives present for almost every year from 1874 to 1911, 1901 being the only blank. He mentioned that already 56 O.U.S.C.'s were members of the Kipling Society. 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. " The Other Kipling." By Miss Pamela Frankau. IN standing here to talk to you to-night I do, I must confess, feel a little like a candidate who, successful in six preliminary drawing examinations, sets out to discuss perspective with Michael Angelo. I do feel that you are far more qualified to talk to me about Kipling than I am to talk to you, but it is hardly necessary to say that I am extremely honoured to be here, for two reasons : the more obvious being that you have invited me—and, with luck, will listen to me : the second goes a little deeper. I belong to a generation which appreciates Kipling rather less than its forerunner appreciated him. Mine is a generation which—and here I am using greater words than my own— says No, where its forerunner said Yes. When we say No we are turning our backs most obstinately on history and romance and everything that makes life victorious. We be- come confessed as the defeatist young, and we become the poetic disciples of Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr. Cummings and all those people whose writings deny the English language and put a series of hiccoughs in its place. We become the pupils of people from, I think, Cambridge—I am not quite sure—and obey that Mrs. Leavis who tells us what to read, but un- fortunately omits to tell us how to read it ; and that is a large omission, the words and the sense being what they are—and what, in heaven's name, are they ? Well, I am not here to depress you with modern half-gods and half-wits. I only mention the instructors of my generation that you may remem- ber again what you possibly know already—that it can make very little of Kipling. He is a man with a thirst—and it is up to us, according to our instructors, to push the cup away before it affronts our languid lips. But to-night at least I have the opportunity of leaving my rather jaded and rather squeaky contemporaries, of whom it has been said: For whom when all goes ill it falls to verse if possible to go a little worse. and when the gates of freedom on their hinge cry ominously, not content to cringe, clap their small hands as the great irons lunge and on the world's behalf throw up the sponge. THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 13 How can I be otherwise than grateful to leave that or a Bloomsbury tea party, and come here to talk to you about Kipling as though I belonged to his time, which in a sense I do, being certain of his living quality. I have called my speech to-night "The Other Kipling." When I say that by "The Other Kipling" I mean the poet Kipling, the title may seem to you offensive, or impertinent, or incomprehensible, or rather whimsical, but I mean it for none of those things. I think it is a proof of Kipling's great- ness that I have the impertinence to talk about him, to discuss him, and to say that there are aspects of his greatness that can be separated. There are very few people in this century great in any one single aspect, let alone three or four. To-night I am going to try to take one aspect of Kipling's greatness : I mean the poet Kipling, the true poet Kipling, as he appears not only in his poetry, but in certain aspects of his prose. There are passages of prose written by many great writers, and by Kipling particularly, that are pure poetry, and to my mind Kipling the true poet is not Kipling the fighter, he is not Kipling the expert, Kipling the scientist, Kipling the traveller, not even Kipling the ballad maker. In these parts the great- ness of his genius and his enthusiasm raise him as a giant. The sound of his voice rings. But if he whom I choose to call to-night "The Other Kipling" be smaller than that giant, be a shadow, to my mind the shadow is the taller of the two ; it is, like all shadows, taller than the substance. He speaks with the absolute authority and still small voice of true poetry. It is he whom I shall try to ambush to-night. After what I have been saying of my contemporaries you may very well judge that I am quite incapable of the task, but in defence I am going to sketch one of those contemporaries at the age of about 16. That contemporary was at school in Sussex. That was Kipling's county. That was a sullen and rebellious child, bad-tempered, and with not much capacity for work, with a habit of glooming about nothing at all. It was bored and was excited and was gloomy in turn. And the mind of that contemporary woke to poetry, and in particular to the poetry of Kipling, and in particular to the ballads of Kipling, every bit as clumsily as the primitive mind woke to the first poetry. (The primitive mind woke to the mnemonics of allit- eration and began to fashion the first poetry simply as a system 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. of mnemonics. Those Anglo-Saxon words were extremely clumsy, it was impossible to rhyme them. They were stamped on the memory, remembered, and spoken first from rough alliteration, as you find it in Beowulf and Piers Plowman. The primitive mind had need of mnemonics, and as the language refined so there came first of all the ballad—the beginning of poetry). In the same way that 1G year old mind woke up ; just as the primitive mind woke to Ali Krasher, it woke to the ballads of Kipling and gulped them. It could remember them and shout them : in the first place, they made a noise that seemed better than its own noise, and in the second place, they indicated power and adventure and places beyond its world. There were moments in that life of intense gloom : one remem- bers such moments particularly, for example, in the bath- room, possibly because the water was nearly always cold. With these words one defied authority. One said to one's self, "Here are a hundred different rhymes, easy on the tongue, satisfying to the mind." Like the primitive mind, one needed mnemonics and used them, saying, "This is poetry, it goes like the wind." Like this— The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before, I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore. There you can see alliteration, oddly enough, but it was not the alliteration that got the young mind, it was the feeling of power, of adventure. So in this— There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield, X X X X You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; You have heard the song—how long ? how long ? Pull out on the trail again. x x x x Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new! All those double rhymes of Kipling's were like the sound of a horse's feet going by in the night, they were exciting, des- perate. One rode with the Colonel's son— It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust—devils go, The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe. x x x x They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn, The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn. THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 15 One took every opportunity of reciting this poetry, letting go on it at school concerts, booming it solemnly. But after a bit quite naturally those lengthy recitations began to pall a little, so that one recited more and more seldom. But those songs were singing in one's ears, and very satisfactory they were because they gave one the chance of seeing another world ; they made one think of all the things one had never done, the places where one had never been— In desire of many marvels over sea Where the new raised tropic city sweats and roars .... Like the shouting of a backstay in a gale." One didn't know what a backstay was, nor why it should shout in a gale. The ballads like the stories were full of incompre- hensible terms. But they bit on the mind and stayed there, as the necessities of education did not at that time . . . One was gloomy, young, one hated being a girl, one worshipped action—and in my view the appeal of Kipling to the young mind is almost entirely the appeal of action and of words as violent in themselves as action. He was indeed—in his own word—the balled singer in the neolithic age of youth. One made of Kipling, that giant, one's god, and it is doubtful whether at that time one had ears for what I am pleased to call to-night "the other Kipling," but I very well remember his first appearance to this particular 16 year old, whom we must imagine sitting in the fourth row of a rather weary school audience listening to a lecture on the subject of wireless. A lecture about wireless at that time caused great excitement. But it was a Lot afternoon, and the lecturer ex- plained the subject so well that the particular 16 year old of whom I am thinking went to sleep, after a bit woke up, found the man was still talking, and went to sleep again. It was rather astonishing for that 16 year old, as the class were leaving the room afterwards, to hear everybody else saying "This is marvellous ; for the first time in one's life one knows something of what wireless is." To which one replied "You could have got that much easier and in half the number of words in a story by Kipling called "Wireless." One was told not to be high- brow. That story is as word perfect as any story that has ever been written by anybody. It had puzzled the young mind that 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. was not hard enough to grasp that language, to recognise true poetry. It knew the story backwards, and it was able to dis- cover the actual and mechanical secret of wireless, as explained by Kipling, but that is not the point of the story. That story gives me the "other" Kipling as perfectly as any line of poetry he has ever written, and I propose to read to you at this meeting a short extract which I hope will show you what I mean. You will remember the chemist's shop on that very cold night, young Mr. Cashell's preparations for this new game of wireless, and the visitor's sudden suspension of interest . because he finds a more real and more true wireless going on in the front room. This is what happened : " Across the street blank shutters flung back the gaslight m cold smears ; the dried pavement seemed to rough up in gooseflesh under the scouring of the savage wind, and we could hear, long ere he passed, the policeman flapping his arms to keep himself warm. Within, the flavours of cardamoms and chloric-ether disputed those of the pastilles and a score of drugs and perfume and soap scents. Our electric lights, set low down in the windows before the tunbellied Rosamund jars, Sung inward three monstrous daubs of red, blue, and green, that broke into kaleidoscopic lights on the facetted knobs of the drug-drawers, the cut-glass scent flagons, and the bulbs of the sparklet bottles. They flushed the white-tiled floor in gorgeous patches; splashed along the nickel-silver counter-rails, and turned the polished mahogany counter- panels to the likeness of intricate grained marbles,—slabs of porphyry and malachite." That to me is pure poetry and the essence of that particular story which I think one did not realise then. You will remem- ber when the chemist is getting the message through, the Keats poetry word by word, and, seized by the words that he is beginning to write—"I dared not gulp . . . lest I should break the spell . . . Remember that in all the millions permitted there are only five—five little lines—of which one can say, 'These are the pure Magic. These are the clear Vision. The rest is only poetry'." I would change this round and say "This is poetry." That is the first example I have to offer to-night of the other Kipling, the quieter, the greater Kipling. After that one left school, and was a trifle gloomy again, and wondering. One had no acquaintance then with any defeatist school of literature, but there was in that mind perhaps a certain hint from those defeatist young, when one said— " Changed are the gods of Hunt and Dance And we with these—farewell romance ! '' THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 17 and found more pleasure in that melancholy line than in the last verse of that poem. One had faith in the last verse but it didn't ring in quite the same way. I remember a return visit to Devonshire. It was early summer and one walked in the woods where the old coach road had been. When they said "There used to be a coach road here," one suddenly felt one had known it all one's life : it took a new meaning, and one came again to "The road through the woods"— They shut the road through the woods . . . But there is no road through the woods." That moment I think the mind pulled taut and took the "other" Kipling and knew poetry just for an instant, but not for more. One took it for what it was and gulped it. One was at that moment installing and worshipping another god—a different Kipling, whom I call to-night "the other Kipling." One came, as one inevitably does, to work, and with work one grew to appreciate far more the whole business of action that Kipling's poems and stories had told to one, that one had seen as something mysterious that one would never be allowed to do—as for example, the building of a bridge. With the coming of work, and doubly with the coming of a certain agnosticism and disbelief and questioning there came an appre- ciation of the story of the bridge builders, which I give to you to-night as my third example of the "other" Kipling. One could appreciate the feelings of Findlayson when the work he had lived by for three years and put into place bit by bit was threatened h.v the flood, as anyone who has ever worked knows that anxious moment when the job is not entirely finished. Yon will remember alter Peroo had given Findlayson the opium and they were alone on the little island, the agony through which he had gone and the curious lifting of that in the opium dream, and above all this when the Gods are talking, you will remember the arrival of Krishna, the parrot scream- ing, and what Krishna said to the Council that night. It had its particular effect on the young mind that was bothering about agnosticism and making rather a mess of things. They say to him . . . "Very tender art thou of thy people'' . . . and he replies "they weary of thee, Heavenly Ones." That was the Gods confessing that there might be a time when in men's minds they would not be immortal— 18 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. " They will forget your altars, but so slowly that no man can say how his forgetfulness began." And one appreciated that story and understood it and one worshipped one's new god—the other Kipling. One selected— and I do not pretend to have selected all of them—examples of that voice speaking quietly, as he speaks when he says— " Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye .... See how our works endure." That I think establishes the other Kipling as none of the others that I shall repeat or refer to to-night can do quite so well. After that I remember that the mind recorded one verse quite suddenly out of nowhere. It was inclined even at school to shout it and mutter it. The verse was— " But a desert stretched and stricken left and right, left and right . . . ." but one suddenly recognised the other Kipling in the first chorus— " But a palm tree in full bearing .... and then the last verse— " But Himalaya heavenward heading .... And the feet of my beloved hurrying back through time." Then one came again to the Brushwood Boy, which is too well known probably to all of you, for me to read from it to- night. Among the things that are not shareable I think a metaphysician places dreams, but I think that is wrong because all of our dreams have the same inconsequence, the same queer- ness, a validity of their own. I dream about a wooden soldier that chases me down the street and you can see you possibly might dream that. One remembers that story, the strong singing that followed them underground, and one remembers perhaps best of all the stone lilies that were floating on the water. It was exactly what in dreams George expected Hong- Kong and Java to look like, just as one in one's own dreams would expect them to look. Kipling traces the man's development, and yet escapes willingly from that rather banal story, with the boy and girl beside the brushwood pile. Whether it was love that led to appreciation of that story, I do not know, but it suddenly took THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 19 on a new meaning. One said, not "This is Magic, the true Vision," but "This is Poetry." Then there is "Kim." Speaking for myself, I was given it too early and did not appreciate it. It was not until I read it three years ago that I realised it in its entirety as a com- pletely perfect and completely quiet thing. In that farewell of Kim and the Lama you follow them through the whole journey. I think in that farewell where Kim cries out that he has not done enough, has not been devoted enough, you get the whole cry of love, the love that knows it has fallen short of its own ideal and has not done the things which it ought to have done in its own sight. " Chela, hast thou never a wish to leave me . . . ." . . . . " Holy One, my heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee. Oh why was I not a man . . . ." and then the true love's reply— What a to-do is here .... I have lived on thy strength .... Know at least the Devils that thou tightest. " —the most reassuring reply that could be given to anybody in the grip of physical weakness and probably the most lovely good-bye ever written. I hope I do not seem in any way to have disparaged or to have criticised Kipling to-night : that would be sheer imper- tinence. I am simply trying to separate one part of Kipling from another. I may be completely wrong in trying. More than ever I may be wrong because I come from that generation —the squeaky and "does not want," "does not care" genera- tion—exactly the opposite of all the things Kipling was. When I think of those particular young I must admit feeling a little discouraged, and when I say I come from them I am showing off ; except by accident of birth I have nothing to do with them. They are said to be very well furnished with what is described as "the will to death." But where their analysis and their introspection are concerned, they may never find that Kipling had written it all long before they had the guts to do so. Let us leave them to-night with their will to death and their whines. I would like to end where I began, with thinking of the young, but a different brand of young than the kind I have just men- tioned. Here I give you my last extract from the "other Kipling"— 20 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. Valour and Innocence Have latterly gone hence, To certain death, by certain shame attended. Envy, ah, even with tears 1 The fortune of their years, Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended. X X X X They did not stay to ask What prize should crown their Task, Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for. But went into eclipse, Her kiss upon their lips, Even Belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for ! DISCUSSION. The Chairman, Lt.-Col. Applin, in thanking Miss Frankau, said :— "We have had a very great treat, and I should like to say how delighted I am to have heard Miss Frankau to-night ; she has reconciled me to my grey hairs and to growing old, because 1 feel that the younger generation, with the suppression of all the emotions, which apparently is one of the great features of that generation, lose so much that 1 have had. "Miss Frankau said one thing that struck her was that Kipling made you think of all those places you had never seen. It is exactly the opposite with me— "The Legion that never was listed . . . ' old Singapore, and all those places I knew so well—what I appreciated in Kipling was that he knew them almost better than I did. I think that one of the most marvellous poems I ever read was the poem he wrote in the South African War on the guarding of the Line. Every detail of that poem was exactly what I had personally experienced just before, and that he should know those things seemed to he little short of a miracle, and especially that he should be able to put them in language so beautiful that all the horrors of guarding the line seemed to be the most delightful reminiscence one could pos- sibly have. I feel that I am indeed privileged to have been here this evening, and I hope I have encouraged other people also to discuss the most interesting lecture we have had for a very long time, and one which has done a great deal for me : if it has not lifted the years from me, it has made me feel, thank God I am not young." THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 21 Mr. Stokes said he had never heard anything about Kipling with which he had so thoroughly agreed, and the lecture had been one of the most excellent he had ever heard in the Kipling Society. He felt that in addition to what Miss Frankau said there was one point necessary to any balanced view, and that was that in Kipling's appreciation of the East there is an understanding of the Hindu religion and of the feel- ing and thought that are the deepest psychological things in India, which is one of the greatest things in "Kipling. Mr. Brooking (Founder) said that after hearing the lecture he appreciated that Miss Frankau had a huge understanding of the best part of Kipling, and added "The way she has given her lecture straight from the shoulder and without any refer- ence to notes that I Lave seen really knocks all the other lectures into cocked hats." Referring to Miss Frankau's remarks about "The Bridge Builders" Mr. Brooking said be ran across that many years ago. He was an engineer, and "The Bridge Builders" hit him in the eye. He thought "who is this man who tells people exactly what happens when things don't go right in an undertaking of this kind, and shows how the difficulties are overcome by sheer grit, energy and under- standing." Colonel Bailey, in expressing his appreciation of the lecture, mentioned how wonderfully Kipling brings things to mind. He noticed this in the Boer War, when he served in Mounted Infantry and could testify to the marvellous way in which Kipling brings out the exact picture in "M.I." Then, if one reads "Oonts," one can picture without difficulty the Indian camel that the Indian Army knows so well. Rudyard Kipling as a Patriot. By the Rev. H. P. Kennedy Skipton, F.S.A., F.R.Hist.Soc. WHEN I took on the task of speaking on the above subject, I let myself in for a much bigger thing than I had anticipated or realised. Not that I have ever wavered in my admiration for Kipling since the early days when I cut out odd poems and utterances of his from the Indian papers ; but that I did not in the least recognise that this witty rhymester was a new power and inspiration whose influence was to be 22 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. world-wide, and actually to give a new turn to our national sense, and a new temper and object to our spirit and politics. There must be some present who can recall that period of eclipse and belittlement of our nation comprised in the early 'eighties and, perhaps, stretching back earlier still. The nations of the world took little account of us, and when there were collisions, England generally came off second-best. The year 1881 was signalised by the tragedy of Majuba Hill ; 1882 by the Phoenix Park murders. The victory of Tel-el-Kebir was followed by a succession of disaster and mismanagement m the Sudan, culminating in 1885 with the practical desertion and consequent murder of Gordon at his post at Khartum. " About Egypt and South Africa and Ireland," says Professor Trevelyan, " Liberals, like other Englishmen, knew little and cared less." In regard to the Colonies the policy of " cutting the painter " was seriously maintained and widely discussed. But about then there appeared that very remarkable book by Professor Seeley, " The Expansion of England," written in no flamboyant vein, which showed us how English " conquests "— so-called—and especially in India, were strictly speaking not " conquests " at all, but, as in India, the settlement of a dis- tracted country or continent, undertaken and carried out by armies and agencies raised from among the people concerned, led by a mere handful of British officers and administrators, bringing in their train peace and justice and civilisation. So some of us began to call ourselves " Imperialists." And, soon after, close upon the steps of Tennyson's " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," appeared those two stirring volumes by James Anthony Froude, studies of the colonial question in Australia and the West Indies—" Oceana " and " The English in the West Indies," which warmed the cockles of our hearts and made us more Imperialists than ever. And in Rudyard Kipling the younger generation began to recognise its mouthpiece, the future uncrowned Laureate of the Empire. So we began to understand, what foreigners have been so slow to understand—when they have understood at all—our British attitude towards so-called " subject " or " conquered " races, which Little Englanders at home so persistently mis- represent. In a memorable speech on St. George's Day, 1920, Kipling, in his inimitable idiom, summed up the situation with rare insight and skill:— THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 23 "And thus, gentlemen—not in a fit of absence of mind—was the Empire born ... By some mysterious rule-of-thunb magic they did establish and maintain a reasonable peace and security among simple folk in many parts of the world, and that without overmuch murder, oppres- sion or torture. It may be that the success of the English was due to their imperturbable tolerance . . . Above all, their long insular exper- ience had taught them the wisdom of the old proverb—That men should not try to do better than good for fear lest worse than bad might follow." I am to discuss Kipling as a patriot. When you come to analyse his work, you find him to be all patriot. Patriotism, the discerning (and when need be, critical) love of England and the Empire, is his consuming passion. It is the inspiration that in one form or another runs through and colours all his work. Nowadays he is denounced as a dangerous Nationalist— as one of the dangers that beset the world to-day. That there is a Nationalism that is a danger, nobody will deny, but briefly, I think, it amounts to something like this : a Patriot is one whose love and esteem for his own country does not entail his being at daggers-drawn with his neighbours—his relations with them are those of live and let live," and he will always seek a peaceable solution of such differences as may arise. The Nationalist, on the contrary, is for ever proclaiming his own superiority—perpetually shaking fists and rattling swords, more intent upon insulting and intimidating his neighbours than upon keeping the public peace. When I analyse the patriotism of Kipling, I find in it no hint of such ignoble things, or even of what is loosely termed " Jingoism." His patriotism is no unbalanced frenzy—" Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law;" hut a grave acceptance of responsibilities and ideals divinely implied in them, which, he would say, every loyal Englishman should accept and fulfil. What was the source of Kipling's intense patriotism? Principally, I suppose, the very remarkable school which he has so graphically described in the " Stalky " stories and in the lesser known article, " An English School " besides the famous ode, " Let us now praise famous men." And that same article includes his boyish verses to the Queen, just in that temper we are recalling— Such greetings as should come from those Whose fathers faced the sepoy hordes, Or served you in the Russian snows And dying left their sons their swords, 24 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. But almost more important I esteem that marvellous story of the Stalky series, " Regulus," with its " little," the essential " little " of it that sticks—the example of the rugged and self-sacrificing patriotism of the grim Roman Consul such as goes home to the heart of every healthy hoy, especially if, as in this case, artistically instilled by an appreciative instructor. Next we get the splendid Vergilian hexameters in which the Roman is reminded of his tremendous mission to rule the peoples, to train them in the ways of peace, to spare the vanquished and to suppress the proud ; culminating in that other Horatian ode with that all-hut untranslatable line, Dix te minorer quod geris imperas, the basis of Kipling's later paraphrase, " Save he serve so man may rule." Then the picture of " King " reading Latin—" as though it were alive"—what fortunate fellows they were that came under such inspiration ! Is it far-fetched platitude to attribute to that school and its masters the sturdy germs of that message which their alumnus was in after days to deliver with such abiding and far-reaching effect? Few features of Kipling's work are more remarkable than the speed with which he " found himself." The miscellaneous pieces which he contributed to the Indian papers, from the very first clever, pointed, graceful, and distinguished by the barbed phrase, the mot juste, soon progressed from the merely satiric note of " Army Headquarters " and " Potiphar Gubbins, C.E." to the grim tragedy of " The Story of Uriah," and the pilloried humbug of " The Masque of Plenty." His jests at the expense of the Simla circle bit deep and delighted the hearts of the district officer; and step by step Kipling climbed into the position of a serious critic, the mouthpiece of much smoulder- ing discontent in the working ranks of the services, and as the sworn enemy of inefficiency and favouritism in high places. But gradually his outlook widened, and in 1891 appeared what I regard as his first ringing patriotic utterance—" The English Flag." With the publication of this noble poem Kipling stepped definitely into the foremost ranks of our singers and ballad-makers ; of Shakespeare in his supreme moments of patriotic exultation ; of Milton when a fine, patriotic insolence led him to claim for his countrymen the title of " God's Englishmen;" of Wordsworth when he indited the stately sonnet upon " British Freedom ;" of Tennyson in a noble THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 25 dedication to Queen Victoria—and shall I add Macaulay in his great Armada ballad, and the later singer, still with us, who wrote " Drake's Drum?" A very noble company surely, and Kipling not the least among them ! Before passing on to particular instances, it should be noted that Kipling was not only a patriot, and wrote not only as a Patriot, but also in that hardly distinguishable capacity, that of the Prophet or Seer. And herein he showed himself of the kin of those splendid Hebrew Prophets, with whose works and mentality he is so exceptionally familiar. It would be difficult to name any living author who has a closer and readier acquaintance with the letter and spirit of the Bible than Kipling. It crops up constantly in his thought, in turns of phraseology, in quoted utterances from recondite sources un- familiar to average students, in effective flashes of archaic Biblical idiom. He follows his compeers of the Old Testament, such giants as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, not to speak of those of the Wisdom group, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, and the Proverbs of Solomon. He follows them in rebuking, exhorting, instructing, and when needful foretelling and warning his countrymen and contemporaries. No English poet can boast so high a proportion of " proven prophecy," such as he attributes to John Bunyan, as Kipling. Our earlier prose prophets, Carlyle, Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, are being once again slowly and reluctantly acknowledged, as their uncanny prescience is brought to light by industrious delvers in their half-forgotten pages. But Kipling has lived to see so many of his warnings fulfilled, and so many of his prophecies showing- promise of fulfilment, that he has attained the very unusual position of a prophet honoured in his own lifetime. And even now, I do not know of any detailed analysis having been attempted that would at all completely demonstrate the sound- ness of his thought and estimate of past and contemporary happenings in our own age, and the piercing accuracy of his poetic vision. With Carlyle he is a worshipper of facts in preference to fancies—though he can manipulate fancies well enough when the surroundings are appropriate. But facts, handled by efficient men who have mastered their subject, whether in respect of machinery, agriculture, warfare, the care of horses, deep-sea navigation, government, motor-cars, or what not, are his idol, and so far Reality is his God. On the other 26 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. hand he has all the equipment of a true poet ; he can look upon these things with a poet's eyes; he can weave the everyday things of life into verse compact of the common speech of men, and withal loose nothing of lofty thought and fit expression; he has a fastidious ear for verbal music, and has enriched our vocabularies with numberless verbal cadences of rare beauty, with vivid turns of speech echoed from the Bible, the poets and prose-writers of old time, the slum, the workshop, the quarter-deck and barrack-square of to-day. He possesses, too, in full measure the mystical sense, the vision that can see the invisible Universe and set at naught the intangible thing called Time. Now let me touch for a moment upon his work for the Empire, for the blending of the separate elements which flocked to the defence of the Mother Country in the season of her dire distress. First, we have the prophetic note at its best in "A Song of the English"—warning, authoritative, uncom- promising as that of the sternest of the Hebrew prophets. We have also the thrilling tribute to Canada in "Our Lady of the Snows." 1 can say little of Kipling's prose, for time is short and in this connection his poetry counts for most. But I must quote from a fine speech of welcome which he delivered in July last year to the Canadian Authors' Association then visiting England. He was speaking to them of the witness of history : " And now men and women are dealing with the marvellous later years when Canada, first of the new powers, sent 400,000 of her best men to the War . . . You have already spent five or six fairly crowded days with us. You have before you ten more, in which to look over some of the title-deeds of your unpurchasable inheritance here .... They are proof of our land's deep unconscious delight through all ages in her own strength and beauty and unjaded youth . . . All things out of our past, in our present, and for our future, are yours by right. They are doubly yours, since the dominant strains of your blood draw from those twin races—French and English—which through- out their histories have been most resolute not to be decivilised on any pretence whatever." In equally serious and stately and even more moving vein are his noble verses upon the Inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia—"The Young Queen." The Boer War was followed by two fierce Kiplingesque denunciations, one of the military inefficiency displayed in the disasters of the war, and the other the bitter contempt ex- pressed in "The Islanders," the degenerate folk who were THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 27 contented to depend upon the Dominions for their fighting men, while their interests were absorbed in games and politics and trivial futilities at home. So he thundered forth in "The Lesson" :— Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should, We have had no end of a lesson : it will do us no end of good. Not poetry, perhaps, but good and patriotic plain-speaking. The other was couched in loftier and more impassioned vein and more withering contempt :— Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed, At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field. Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land's long-suffering star), When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplings went to the war. X X X X And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye flaunted your iron pride, Ere—ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride ! Indeed there is practically no place or region of national activity upon which Kipling does not touch, and always with that note which suggests a specialist speaking upon his own particular topic. Not least Kipling does this for the Sea, the stage upon which, as he visualises it, more than half the drama of our Empire is played. In endless variety he dwells upon the manifold human activities associated with it, apart from the achievements of the Royal Navy, which he never tires of chanting in strains that make the pulses tingle. He has words of praise and encouragement for the lonely tramp steamer— the "Bolivar," undermanned, ill-found and rotten, fighting her desperate passage " across the Bay." There are the " Big Steamers," on which we depend for "the sweets that you suck and the joints that you carve" ; the manifold perils of the North Sea Patrol ; the wild achievements and hairbreadth escapes (when they were fortunate enough to escape!) of "The Trade" ; and the jolly chantey of the merchantmen, which aptly expresses the merry spirit of their service :— Coastwise—cross-seas—round the world and back again— Where the flaw shall head us or the Trades drive down— Plain-sail—storm-sail—lay your board and tack again— And all to bring a cargo up to London Town ! I have left myself little space to deal with two aspects of Kipling's patriotic utterances which deserve much fuller treat- 28 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. ment—his contribution to the inspiration that upheld the spirit of the nation through the Great War, and his tributes to the memory of Lord Roberts and other of our national heroes and benefactors. In regard to the War he availed himself of the splendid opportunity to do his country inestimable service. While our official Laureate kept silence, he was pouring out trumpet strains, in prose as well as in verse, which I should like to see collected into a single volume with a full explana- tory introduction for post-war readers. He could fall upon the hinderers and talkers and disloyalists at home, as well as inspire the devoted battalions at the front. The very magnitude of his achievement in this respect makes it impossible for me to do more than weakly to generalize upon it. Suffice it to say that Kipling was never more indisputably the Uncrowned Laureate of Empire than in this tremendous crisis of our History ; nor has be been silent since. I had intended to speak at length also upon his elegies on our famous men, at the head of which stands the noble poem on Lord Roberts :— Never again the war-wise face, The weighed and urgent word That pleaded in the market place— Pleaded and was not heard. King Edward VII, Cecil Rhodes, Joseph Chamberlain and (in prose) Lord Milner, were others of our Pantheon whom he commemorated in worthy terms. But here I must cease. I hope that I have convinced you —if, indeed it were needed—that the debt which this country and the Empire as a whole owes to Rudyard Kipling, as its patriotic prophet, seer and spokesman, is immeasurable. His achievement in this respect is far in advance of that of any poet in our long and chequered history. He has won a place which none of his predecessors can question or challenge, in the forefront of our patriotic singers, a rank which none of his successors is likely to rival or excel. Yet, many-sided though he is in outlook and expression, I think his creed, his pas- sionate faith, is in essence sufficiently summed up in one of his simplest stanzas :— If England was what England seems, An' not the England of our dreams, But only putty, brass, an' paint, Ow quick we'd chuck 'er 1 BUT SHE AIN'T! THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 29 DISCUSSION. In declaring the Paper open to discussion, the Chairman thanked Mr. Kennedy Skipton for his brilliant and instructive arguments, and said that he was very much impressed with what they had been told and with the national spirit and English feelings expressed by the lecturer. As the reputed original of "M'Turk," Mr. G. C. Beres- ford was heard with interest:—"It is hardly correct to look upon Kipling's upbringing and the influences that surrounded him in his youth as patriotic or militarist ; the opposite is rather the case. From this influence arises the strength of his appeal in his subsequent propaganda of Imperialism ; if this upbring- ing had been wholly on patriotic lines, then his influence would have been much less effective. An education in blinkers would have left him preaching to the converted only ; what has been so notable in his work is that he has been able to influence, enormously, the wobblers, those who had previously taken no definite side. What were these slightly anti-patriotic in- fluences ? Firstly, his home holidays were the Burne-Jones circle. Now, Burne-Jones, being rather Welsh, was Celtic- fringey and inclined to little Englandism ; he was a supporter of Gladstone, an opposer of Beaconsfield. He got up neutral- ity meetings and rather stood against British interests. If he had lived, he might have been a pro-Boer, as Lady Burne- Jones was. All this is set forth in "Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones" by Lady Burne-Jones. Cormell Price, the "Head," was a schoolfellow and great friend of Burne-Jones, whom he carefully followed in his excursions in politics. King, the second master, was a strong Gladstonian Liberal, anti- war in any cause, very anti-Beaconsfield, whose influence he hated. The other masters were generally blandly Liberal, so, both at home and at school, Kipling was faced by rather luke- warm patriotism. Kipling had a good look at the non-patriotic side ; he knew it in all its moods and tenses, though he himself took no side—he looked on the world simply as subject-matter for writing, to be investigated in order to take its place on paper. Kipling's effectiveness as an advocate of Empire has been so powerful because it arises from knowing intimately both sides of the question. If he had been trained all public- schooly like, say, Sir Henry Newbolt, he would have written things like "Admirals All," appealing only to the converted. 30 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. Kipling even steers clear in Ms verse of the mention of historic names like Benbow, Nelson, etc., also of words like fame, glory, hero. Hence his winged words are so effective, but it is all done so cleverly that many do not notice how it is done ; he appeals by under-statement—seldom by over-statement. Kipling avoids the former, which is why his influence has been so enormous and pervasive." Mr. Bazley (Hon. Editor) said that a little time ago a professor of a Canadian University wrote in an essay on Kipling that, after all, patriotism in itself was not a crime and, even if it were, quite 90 per cent. of the world's great poets, in any age, were guilty of it, as Tennyson, Wordsworth and Browning—it was wrong in Kipling, but correct in them. Lt.-Gen. Sir George F. MacMunn, speaking of Little Englandism, said that a friend of his and Mr. Cecil Rhodes went to Lord Granville offering to buy from the Portuguese their East African colonies for some £600,000 ; they were ready to pay about £200,000 each if the Government would pay the rest, but Granville, being a Little Englander, turned it down. Referring to Kipling as a prophet, he said that he him- self had expected the Great War to come in 1912 ; actually, when the mobilisation notices were posted in Germany, they were all dated 1912 and altered in ink to 1914. At Query Time, Commander Locker-Lampson asked if it were true that Kipling had written "Recessional," but was not satisfied with it, and in a fit of annoyance flung it into the waste-paper basket, from which it was rescued by Lady Burne- Jones. The Hon. Editor replied that this was the generally accepted story. On the new Kipling film of "Kim" and part of "Soldiers Three," Sir George MacMunn said that a company had gone to India to make this ; he mentioned that the enormous fortress which dominates Lahore had now been greatly changed and the interior laid out as a public garden. THE KIPLING JOURNAL. 31 Kipling Prices Current. THAT times really are a bit better is shown by some American book sales. A fair copy of " Departmental Ditties " (1st) brought 300 dollars, whilst the copyright issue of " The Female of the Species " realised 210 dollars. Last month Messrs. Puttick and Simpson sold a Kipling letter for £4 5s. 0d., which contained his sentiments towards the Welsh language:—" I am as a babe unborn in these matters, but I thoroughly realise that Welsh is an absolutely glorious tongue to sing in—liquid and yet firm, with a marvellous range of expression, communicable even to the heathen like myself. Now I want more Welsh songs. Where can I get 'em, and who is the best Welsh singer?" In view of the possible rise in prices collectors would be well advised to look round the London shops. Among other items, the Standard Book Shop, St. John's Hill, Clapham Junction, was offering a ' first ' of " Barrack-Room Ballads " for 10s. 6d. Mr. H. M. Fletcher, of Enfield, catalogued " Just So Stories " (first) for 30s., and Messrs. Foyle have had a number of interesting items at very reasonable prices. Secretary' s Announcements. (1) Meetings. Session 1933-34. The remainder are :— 4th, 18th April, 1934 (Wednesday). Rembrandt Rooms, 8.30 p.m. Lecturer: M. André- Maurois, C.B.E., M.C. Subject: " R.K. and his works from a French point of view. '' In the chair : Lady Cunynghame. M. Maurois will speak in French, with a short address in English at the beginning, and end. of his Lecture. 5th (Special), 19th June, 1934 (Tuesday). Rembrandt Rooms, 8.30 p.m. (Evening before the Annual Conference and Luncheon). Lecturer: The President. Subject: "R.K. and the Indian Soldiers." In the chair: The Rt. Hon. Lord Moynihan, K.C.M.G., C.B., LL.D. (2) Annual Conference and Luncheon. 20th June, 1934 (Wednesday), at Rembrandt Rooms. Chief Guest at Luncheon: H.E., Mr. R. W. Bingham— Ambassador of the U.S.A. in London—has accepted our invitation. (3) American Members. Your attention is invited to paragraph two, and it is hoped that as many of you as possible will be present, and so let us have an " American Day." 32 THE KIPLING JOURNAL. (4) The Secretary has received a very artistic and attractive " Rudyard Kipling Calendar " for 1934 (Delgado), and cannot trace the sender in order to thank him for his (or her) gift. Can anyone throw light on it please? (It was not sent by Publishers). (5) Journals : Back Numbers.—In order to help new members who desire to purchase back numbers the following special prices will be charged for the present, for all orders for two, or more, Journals:—Nos. 3 to 8, 2s. 6d. each. Nos. 9 to 11 and No. 24, 2s. each. No. 1 (Reprint) and all others, 1s. each. Members requiring single copies will be charged as at present on page 100 of Journal No. 27. No. 2 is out of print but) will shortly be reprinted, and the charge will be reasonable. (6) With this issue goes a new leaflet and also one of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society's, with whom we are exchanging pamphlets. C. Bailey, Colonel, General Secretary. ROLL OF NEW MEMBERS TO MARCH, 1934. Nos. 1242 to 1259. 124a Lt.-Col. A. E. S. Fennell Weybridge 1243 J. S. Ker CALCUTTA 1244 Mrs. D. H. Ellison Weybridge 1245 Mrs. Joseph Christopher U.S.A. 1246 Dr. Arthur L. Walsh CANADA 1247 Bernard Lichtenberg U.S.A. 1248t Frederick S. Todman U.S.A. 1249 Frank E. Geary London (Transferred from Associate). 1250 R. C. Hobart INDIA 1251 Penfield Mower U.S.A. 1252t Alexander Woollcott U.S.A. 1253 Miss M. S. Jackson London 1254 Mrs. Clyde Brown U.S.A. 1255 W. S. Bowness CANADA 1256 Miss Helen Hewat Surbiton Hill 1257 F. Cabot Holbrook U.S.A. 1258+ Lt.-Col. W. G. H. Vickers INDIA 1259 Saskatoon Public Library CANADA t" Life " Member. +O.U.S.C.