CONTENTS PAGE Notes—-J. P. Collins........ 1 Rudyard Kipling as I Knew Him— Admiral G. A. Ballard, c.b. - 3 The Canigou ---------- 5 What in Kipling's Writings Appeals Most to Me R. Anthony - - - - - - - - 6 Critics and Their Victims—Noel Lawson Lewis - - 8 Kipling and the Engineers—II—R. M. Harvey - 9 Kipling and the Germans: Conclusion—B. M. Bazley - 11 Kipling Library Notes—W. G. B. Maitland 13 Letter Bag ----------15 The Society's Annual Conference ----- 17 THE KIPLING SOCIETY SALES DEPARTMENT Gilt Badges : 2/6 Postcards : Burwash or Kipling's Grave. 1d. each or 9d. per dozen. Kipling Pencils : 2d. each or 1/9 per dozen. Book Plates : 1d. each Society's Show Card : Free, where a member can have it displayed in any club, hotel, etc. Journals : Extra copies for mem- bers only : 6d. each. Special prices, which may be obtained from the Secretary, apply however to those numbers which are nearly out of print. List of Members : Extra copies for members only, 6d. All the above are sent post free. Correspondence should be addressed to The Hon. Secretary, The Kipling Society, 105, Gower Street London, W.C.l Tel. Euston 7117 THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. XIII. No. 79 October, 1946 Notes ADMIRALS ALL. SOMETIMES a contribution takes our fancy through its artless- ness, and at others by its pene- tration. But every now and then the Editor gets an appreciation of R.K. which fulfils all expectations, though it is studiously discreet and balanced in tone. Admiral Ballard touches on a dozen aspects of the man and his work, his love of engines and dogs, his keen interest in nautical bat, but above all, his conquest of a big ship's officers and crew across the barriers of his task. For he came aboard in war-time, to share close quarters in the guise of an envoy of the Press; and no-one who has had to board a warship in war- time under that grisly mantle, will ever forget the icy chill of the first encounter. It is all to the good, moreover, that in the tribute which follows this preamble, the Admiral never doffs that fine and natural dignity which belongs to his rank and calling, matured as it was in a " salt of the old school "by a blend of discipline and loyalty that in those days never unbent—or hardly ever. We can all enjoy the bone he picks with an established and classic favourite like Treasure Island, though it is but fair to remember it was the early product of a lung-stricken invalid trying to fashion an adventure yarn for a lad. We may well cry a thousand pities that R.L.S. and Kipling never met, for the resultant sparks and flashes would have been a harvest of genius, especially in their tonic passion for the sea and all it means to this island race of ours. THE UNSPEAKABLE CRITIC. In his generous sheaf of contri- butions to the Society's library, Mr. Lawson Lewis, of Cleveland, Ohio, encloses an essay from the " Evening Standard" of 23 years ago which recalls some vivid memories. It was written by the late T. W. H. Cros- land, that licensed jester of the Hulton ménage, and was illustrated by a portrait sketch from the deft brush of his crony and colleague, the late Matt Sandford " Croz," it may be recalled, had made himself notorious, if not famous, by the first book of a trilogy. This volume bore the invidious title, " The Unspeakable Scot," and though he kept the Border at a respectful distance afterwards, his books displayed all that original waggery and half-malice which be- came him well. T. W. was truly the frankest of beings. One night at an office dinner he stood up and entertained us with the story of his life, starting as a paper-selling lad in Manchester and winding up as a writer of delicious light verse, as well as the author of a fine, discerning book upon the sonnet as a literary form. From be- ginning to end this impromptu auto- biography was laced with the most racy and audacious streaks of wit and humour, and showed the lavish gifts of nature which truly made him the critic he was. ROUGH SPONSORSHIP. This particular essay of Crosland's is headed " Admirers of Mr. Kipling : Do we require another Society ? Stalky and his New Idea." It then proceeds to belabour this society of ours with all the chaff one might have expected, and includes a parody of Kipling's poem Oonts which tempts one to quote. Turning to the poet's reluctance at first to accept the Society as he came to do later, this irrepressible Charivari tuned up as follows :— " What makes the poet swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in And wonder whether being a bard is really not a sin? 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 It ain't the bloomin' parodists and critics and all that, But just the gentle cronker cronk- ing cronkness thro' his 'at. He goes on to remind the devotees behind the movement that the Brown- ing Society went to pieces in four years, and asserts that " all there is in Kipling to be reasonably argued about could, as it seems to us, be easily disposed of in a couple of months." Now, nobody ever knew a hit-or-miss railer like " Croz " ever open an attack without risking many a mistake, and this, as events have shown, was truly one of his worst. Nevertheless, he was a true Bohemian of talent, with a hearty northern nature: and many a greater author might be proud to have written the lyric he wrote in honour of his much-tried wife under the character of Audrey. He rounds up all the fashionable chatterers who prattle of the critic's chances of celebrity if he were not married to so plain a spouse, without any smattering of letters, but only her faithful and diligent house-pride to commend her. Thus, the last verse— Touchstone (let them mark it well) When the social round is trod, Bored by dame and demoiselle, Goes home softly, praising God. In spite (or because) of its badinage and other qualities, there is real appreciation of R.K. in the piece, and I hope some day to see the Editor print it. OUR LIBRARY'S RESOURCES. These gleanings from Mr. Lewis, Mrs. Groves and others do but remind one how substantial and extensive the Society's library has become, and how the passing of his generation is bringing precious books and scraps and memories of Kipling from all directions. Mr. Maitland's services have been disinterestedness personi- fied, coupled with consistent diligence and assiduity in the search for Kip- ling treasure of the kind that his ripe judgment requires. His note in this month's number is valuable as reminding (or let us say inform- ing), our members how rich the library is in all that lore of research and reference which repays the en- thusiastic Kipling reader For in- stance, Mr. Lawson Lewis draws our attention to the fact that although the late H. D. Traill invited Kipling to represent poetry in the first number of that memorable weekly, " Literature," this may have been in order to expiate an indiscretion of the past. It was when he had hailed Kipling as a " minor poet," and indeed he lived to regret his mistake. Doubtless Mr. Maitland and the library would enable some in- vestigator to trace the passage where Traill had used the phrase, and this would satisfy more than one enquirer. KIPLING AND SANTLEY. By the way, there never was a better time than the present, to appreciate accessibility in these avenues of research, when so many of us are suffering from war-damage staffs engaged in repairing our domi- ciliary injuries after war bombard- ment. When someone alleges a lapse or a slip in Kipling's writings, I bethink me of a case that turned up years ago in a sixpenny London copy of " Departmental Ditties " (whether pirated or not, it is hard to say). It spoke of one of the poet's heroes rejoicing in a tenor voice of Santley's quality, and the allusion recalled that glorious voice from the lavish Victorian era. The fact is, that although he seemed a baritone at his best, Sir Charles possessed a voice which defied classification on ordinary lines. My old friend, Mr. J. Mewburn Levien, of the Athenaeum Club, the Nestor of voice production and musical reminiscence, was intimate with Santley for many a long year, and has written his best biography, replete with characteristic anecdotes, and here is one that bears upon the question now at issue. In the 'fifties, when Santley was studying in Italy, Nava, his tutor, was discussing his voice with the great maestro, Lamperti, who remarked " When he sings low, it's like a bass; when he sings in the middle, it's like a baritone; and when he gets up high, it's like a tenor." Such admissions from a high authority are rare indeed, and the story is all the more welcome because it shows that Kipling was anything but wrong after all ! J. P. Collins, October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 Rudyard Kipling as I Knew Him By ADMIRAL G. A. BALLARD, C.B. WHEN I accepted an invitation to join the Kipling Society I was informed that personal reminiscences of him were much in request among its members, and I am very pleased therefore to meet the desire of the Editor to contribute some account of my own experiences in that respect for its Journal. FIRST ACQUAINTANCE. My first acquaintance with Rudyard Kipling was only brief and super- ficial. It was in 1898 when he was the private guest of the Captain of a cruiser in the same squadron as a ship in which I was myself a Com- mander. His host was merely taking him round on a series of visits to each vessel. But during the early part of the first World War I saw a good deal of him at close quarters. He was writing on various aspects of the war for one of the leading London daily papers under official sanction, and received special facilities from the Admiralty. I was Admiral in command of the East Coast patrol forces at that time and was ordered to receive him as my official guest for a specified period during which he was to be allowed to get an idea of our work without disclosing con- fidential matter. He arrived on board my flagship accordingly and for more than a week occupied the spare cabin and sat at my table with my personal staff and self. And of course he made the acquaintance of the other officers on board. At first a slight reserve existed on both sides. For our part, we were somewhat impressed by finding such a celebrity among us; and he, to begin with, rather felt the novelty of his surroundings I think, as he was diffident in manner, and in fact almost deferential towards me. But all that soon wore off, and we were all on a very sociable and easy footing before he departed. In leaving he spoke to me in most appreciative terms about his stay on board with such obvious sincerity that I am convinced he enjoyed it. I know that I did. We had a laugh together over his problem of producing articles to interest the public when all the really interesting points in the work of the patrols were strictly secret. However he possessed in a remarkable degree the gift of making the most of any subject he chose to write about, and I found that reading it was almost more absorbing than the subject itself in this case, though the subject was not without its excite- ments. He would have liked to mix with the men forward, and I told him he might if he wished, but that I doubted if they would talk with complete freedom to anybody they knew to be a semi-official guest in the Admiral's quarters. He quite saw that point and decided to remain aft. When he left I lost touch with him till a fairly long time after the war. I had retired from the Navy and I believe he was no longer connected directly with journalism. But we were both members of the Society for Nautical Research, in whose activities he took a close interest, and through which he started a corre- spondence with me, lasting on and off till near his end. He wrote to me that he was attracted by the little he had heard about life in the Navy in Victorian days but never had the chance to be sufficiently acquainted with it to use it properly in literature. He put a whole series of questions to me on the subject, as having lived in it. I was only too pleased to respond, especially as in this renewal of intercourse the approach had come from his side when I had presumed that he had probably forgotten all about me. Apparently he was con- sidering the idea of some nautical tales, and being always anxious to avoid " howlers," felt the truth of Southey's observation that a lands- man writing on nautical affairs " had to tread as carefully as a cat in a china pantry." Thus he would scarce- ly have committed Stevenson's absur- dity in " Treasure Island " where the secret position of the buried loot is indicated by a precision in longi- tude equivalent to measuring the 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 width of the Atlantic in feet, at a period in history when no means existed of obtaining it with more accuracy than the nearest thirty miles. It was not that Kipling never tripped up at all, but his mistakes were few and confined to his earlier works when he confessed to less care. He asked me to point them out and thanked his stars that his reviewers had never served at sea. KNOWLEDGE OF SEA LANGUAGE. But he did acquire a very good knowledge in one way or another of technical sea language, and would spend hours for instance on a ship's bridge or in the engine room. Com- plex and powerful machinery seemed to fascinate him, and he always insisted on its genuine but com- monly unrecognised romance. It was this side of his genius that produced M'Andrew's Hymn, in which Kipling's free use of highly technical language is faultless throughout. Again in his short story The Ship that found Herself he went all out in nautical terms and never slipped up once either in the actual words or their correct application. It was the same in his treatment of the major aspects of seafaring existence, as in the Merchantman. His line " We dipped our gunnels under to the dread Agulhas roll " is a fine instance of an understanding that brought a grim chuckle of appreciation from many ancient mariners as a reminder of a night passed under close-reefed sails in a roaring south-wester on the Agulhas Bank, one of the storm- iest stretches of water in the whole world. I have been through that experience and can testify to the vivid insight of the allusion. Possibly it does not mean so much to modern seamen, as all steamer tracks lie inshore of the Bank. Moreover a steamer can meet a heavy sea bows on, whereas a vessel lying-to under sail must take its buffets in her ribs, and " dips her gunnels under " accord- ingly. Unfortunately on some occasions they dipped too far to come up again. I dwell on this as a pro- fessional seaman of the old school to emphasize Kipling's remarkable realization of the conditions of our existence and occupation sixty years ago at sea. THE MEN IN THE SHIPS. And if ships and their gear attracted his attention, it was attracted still more by the sort of men to be found on board, if the questions he put to me were any indication. He seemed particularly curious to know what sort of contact existed between mid- shipmen of schoolboy age (as they were in Victorian times) and the much older petty officers and men placed under their authority in many situ- ations, especially in a boat away from the ship when all responsibility for handling the boat and the boat's crew lay with the midshipman in charge. I told him that the men soon sized up the qualities of these officers in command, and that speak- ing from personal experience it was uncommonly good training for the midshipman in the ways of both boats and bluejackets, in which they learnt lessons they were never likely to forget. This seemed to tickle R. K. No doubt it is unnecessary to inform members of the Kipling Society that he was a man of very varied tastes and interests. But as I have been invited to tell what I knew of him, I may perhaps just mention his fond- ness for dogs. He was greatly taken by a yarn of mine about the rescue of a spaniel belonging to me when I commanded the cruiser Hampshire, which, although not gun-shy in the field, did nevertheless jump overboard at sea on the first occasion of being terrified by the noise and shaking of heavy gun practice in the ship, and always had to be locked below when that took place afterwards. Kipling sometimes liked to indulge in a fanciful manner of expressing himself. As an instance, he acquired a copy of the International Flag Signal Book, which before the in- vention of wireless telegraphy was freely used by the ships of all countries for communicating with each other at sea or with Lloyds Signal Stations, in the days when vessels were often on voyages lasting unbroken for months. Meetings in mid-ocean between two such, nearly always meant an inter- change of the signal " Do you report all well?" The book has a coloured plate showing all the flags with the letter of the alphabet or the numeral figure each represents. One day a October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 letter came to me, on the envelope of which I recognised his handwriting, but on opening was mystified to find a first sheet entirely covered by a display of hand-painted flags, which I eventually discovered could be read as that same signal. He repeated that little joke two or three times afterwards, on each occasion with a different signal. THE LAST LETTER. But the last letter I had from him was very brief and not jocular. He simply asked me to accept as a gift an autographed copy of his latest published work; and I have sometimes rather wondered whether he felt that even if his end was not imminent, it might not be far off. I never was in touch with Kipling's private life nor he with mine. Our contact was entirely associated with matters of interest outside domestic circles, though in that form it ex- tended, with only occasional lapses, over twenty years. To me he seemed to combine strong views, honestly formed, with a modest and unaffected personality and a fine sense of humour. Of course he could not help being aware of the favourable publicity of his name in many countries; but I do not think that held much place in his thoughts, and it never seemed to affect his outlook. I believe he was about the last man in the world to be influenced by public popularity, which is perhaps just one of the reasons it came to him. The Canigou (Excerpt from ' Travels in the Pyrenees ' by W. C. Scott O'Connor, London, John Long, Ltd., MCM XIII) (We are indebted to Mr. Basil M. Bazley for the following note). THE latest of its poetic admirers is Rudyard Kipling, in whose verse we may hope that the immortal mountain may be enshrined for English hearts. Meanwhile he has allowed me to transcribe here some of his own first impressions of it conveyed in a letter to M. George Auriol of Perpignan. This letter is already well known in its French version all over the Pyrénées-Orientales for in France such things are held of much account, and the visit of a Poet, of a man pre-eminent in letters, appeals more to the Department than that of all the crowds of distinguished and titled people who now frequent the Vernet waters. " I came here," wrote Mr. Kipling, " in search of nothing more than a little sunshine. But I found Canigou, whom I discovered to be a magician among mountains, and I submitted myself to his power. At first he could reproduce for me, according to the thought or the desire of the moment either a peak of the Himalayas or the outlines of certain hills in South Africa which are dear to me; trans- porting me, for example, to the still heat and the unforgettable smell of the pines behind my house under Table Mountain, at the instant when I expected to hear the horns of some Hindu temple upon his upper slopes." But this year he has taken to him- self his own place in my mind and heart, and I watch him with wonder and delight. Nothing that he could do or give birth to would now sur- prise me, whether I met Don Quixote himself riding in from the Spanish side, or all the chivalry of ancient France watering their horses at his streams, or saw (which each twilight seems quite possible) gnomes and kobbolds swarming out of the mines and tunnels of his flanks." That is the reason, my dear Mon- sieur Auriol, that I venture to sub- scribe myself among the number of the loyal subjects of Canigou." 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 What in Kipling's Writings APPEALS MOST TO ME A SCHOOLBOY'S PRIZE ESSAY (For some time past, Captain E. W. Martindell has presented a prize in a Kipling Essay Prize Competition for boys of Victoria College, Jersey. This year the writer and winner of the Prize is a boy of 17 years of age named R. Anthony, whose essay is reproduced below. " We, who judged the Competition,'' writes Captain Mar- tindell, " thought the standard high, and this boy's effort admirable. My second Prize Competition is for boys in the Preparatory School and was won by a boy aged exactly 10 years, named A. B. Carter, and the standard was agreeably high. There were thirty- six competitors and the competition was a great success. The boys had to recite one of two of R. K.'s poems— (a) ' A Song to Mithras ' or (b) ' A Smuggler's Song '—and read the first part of the story of Weland's Sword from 'Puck of Pook's Hill.'") IN approaching the subject of what in Kipling's writings appeals most to me I am at once struck by the vastness of the field from which the choice is to be made. There have been numerous great writers of both prose and verse in English Literature but they have been specialists in one field, and that a small one. In his stories and in his poetry (and I have read only a fraction of his prolific output) what appeals to me above all is his universality, for, as a contemporary writer and critic has aptly said, ' his imagination played perpetually round the ends of the earth.' What attracted me when I first came to know Kipling's prose were his animal stories, as told in the Just So Stories and the two Jungle Books. I still remember the excite- ment with which I followed the encounter between Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, ' with eyeballs of red,' and Nag. Kipling made animals and the jungle familiar to me : he did more, he made them almost human, so that I was as close to them as Mowgli, whose brothers they were. A LIVING BACKGROUND. Since then I have enjoyed reading many of Kipling's short stories, and those which appeal to me most are about India. Many of these intrigue me because they have a surprise ending—as for example The Mutiny of the Mavericks. But above all, in his stories of that great sub- continent in which he lived, worked and wrote for so long, I admired his power of telling a gripping story, while at the same time he drew a living background with a hand derived from a great love and a close knowledge of the people and country. Such is his power of description that I am transported to India and to the nineteenth century and find while reading his tales, nothing dated in the toast in the Mess, Mr. Vice, the Queen. Whatever the ultimate destiny of India and in spite of, and perhaps because of, criticisms of its teeming millions, I feel that by his stories, many of which could still serve un- consciously as textbooks for ad- ministrators of any country, Kipling has shown the ideal of unselfish service by the Sahib, as well as the appreciation of the native. However, I do not wish to imply that Kipling appeals to me only when he is dealing with the govern- ing and the governed. The amusing, if sometimes poignant, Mulvaney ad- ventures show Kipling's appreciation of the qualities and the failings of the ' other ranks.' To my mind, one of the most delight- ful stories is Namgay Doola. Who but Kipling could make the teller of the story recognise in a native wailing chant the chorus of The Wearing of the Green ? And who but he, understanding the unruly nearer home as well as he did those of India, could have triumphantly ended that October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 story with the words—' I know that breed?' I have read somewhere that Kip- ling has not to be defended against the charge of obscurity in his poetry, but against that of excessive lucidity. The greatest poets of this and the last century have set forth great thoughts, often wrapped up in mystic language and in metre that never scanned. What appeals to me so much in Kipling's poetry is the very fact that while enunciating great principles and affirming great truths he is always so lucid, and his versi- fication is such that it can be enjoyed by labourer and litterateur alike. Who is so simple or yet so learned that he cannot realise the truth set out by Kipling in The Glory of the Garden, as true today as it was when it was written ? How few of the many millions of our countrymen, women, boys and girls, can have failed, during the dark days of World Wars I and II to remember the warning uttered so simply and so lyrically in Big Steamers ? POETRY OF PATRIOTISM. What appeals to me also in what I might call Kipling's poetry of patriotism is his supreme ability, shared also by that other great patriot and writer of prose, Mr. Winston Churchill, to crystallize the thoughts of our nation in a few lines. Written during the Great War, how prophetic of 1940 were his words :— 'Who stands—if freedom fall? 'Who dies—if England live?' In these post-war days, when the demobilised are striving to begin life anew, Kipling, to ray mind, echoes the hopes—aye, and the fears of many, in such poems as The Absent- Minded Beggar and in Tommy. Finally if any further proof of Kipling's vision of the destiny of his country need be given, may I remind you of those superb lines in The Islanders, written nearly forty years before the event? I know that because of its familiar- ity, many are inclined to belittle Kipling's If, but I believe that in its lilting lines he has laid down in every- day language all that is contained within and much that is omitted from the Ten Commandants. I have been lately reading Keats, that poet of Beauty, but Kipling appeals to me more as a portrayer of Beauty and as a writer of harmon- ious verse when I read such poems as that which begins, Buy my English Posies !, Sussex and Mandalay. This is lyrical poetry at its best, simple and bell-like in its clarity. And so I have tried to express my appreciation of what I have read of the prose and poetry of Rudyard Kipling, and to sum up, I would like to say, as I did at the outset, that what appeals to me most are his universality, his gifts as a teller of tales and as a poet of simple beauty, and greatest of all, as a prophet of the destiny of the Empire of the Mother Country. The Boy of Villers Bocage DURING the war the little Nor- mandy town of Villers Bocage was the scene of some bitter fighting and it is interesting to recall that Rudyard Kipling mentions it in his Souvenirs of France (Mac- millan, 1933). But who was the " Boy of Villers Bocage who will unquestionably be the second de Lesseps of France," and did he fulfil Kipling's prophecy ? What was it that prompted him to make such a pronouncement ? Perhaps one day we may find out. W G. B. M. 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 Critics and their Victims By NOEL LAWSON LEWIS (The Rowfant Club, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.) (The following extracts are taken from a recent address to the Rowfant Club by Mr. Lawson Lewis, in which reference to Rudyard Kipling was made). THAT very strong young man, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, when in his middle twenties, that is to say, in 1890, he being then twenty-five years of age, wrote a poem called " The Conundrum of the Work- shops," the first half dozen lines of which will serve to introduce our subject tonight. These lines are :— " When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould; And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, ' It's pretty, but is it Art?' Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew— The first of his race who cared a fig for the first most, dread review." From this fragment I think it is easy for us to see who, in Mr. Kipling's estimation, was the first critic and, as many an artist and author would agree, was the father of all critics— the Devil, no less. You will observe that the first victim of criticism took the review to heart and did not fight back. Indeed, we are told that he even went so far as to fashion his work anew. Now let us see what happened as time went on. We give Mr. Kipling five years to assimilate the critic and, behold, we find him in 1895, at the age of thirty, writing thus in his poem, " In the Neolithic Age "— " In the Neolithic Age, savage warfare did I wage For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt. I was singer to my clan in that dim red Dawn of Man, And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt. " Yea, I sang as now I sing when the Prehistoric Spring Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove; And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg Were about me and beneath me and above. " But a rival of Solutré told the tribe my style was outré 'Neath a tomahawk of diorite he fell. And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged below the heart Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle." You observe, we are now getting into a more modern, shall we call it, state of mind. The victim of the critic is no longer satisfied to take his medicine lying down, as it were, and to " fashion his work anew." No, he asserts himself vigorously and the critic learns that he can't merely sit in the seats of the mighty and pronounce judgment : he must be ready to fight and even suffer for his opinions. From this point the talk went on to examples of criticism and the reactions thereto—such as Ruskin and Millais, Ruskin and Whistler, Tennyson and Bulwer Lytton, etc. In referring to present-day sex and other " dirty " stuff, I took the liberty to borrow and apply some appropriate words from Kipling's letter to a schoolboy printed in the last Journal, quoting the very good comparison of the baby messing its clothes. I also referred to " White Horses " and Literature and mentioned the coincidence that H. D. Traill who certified R. K. as a " minor poet " (see verse 6 of the Neolithic Age) was the editor of Literature that first printed " White Horses " October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 Kipling and the Engineers By R. M. HARVEY, M.I.E. (Australia) (This is the second part of an address by the Vice-President of the Melbourne Branch of the Kipling Society to Members on the Branch's Annual Meeting Night). KIPLING seems to have known some marine engineers rather well and M'Andrew's Hymn must attract the attention of mechani- cal men who may be forgiven for examining it rather closely. The chron- ology is interesting. The Hymn, it is really a soliloquy or spoken thought, was delivered in 1886, a year destined to be fateful for engineers. M'Andrew we deduce, is about 65 and began life as a boy cleaning boilers round about 1835, but how he graduated to en- gineer we do not know. He would have gone to sea in that capacity about the age of 21, that is in 1842, when steam pressures were in the neighbourhood of 10lbs., and boilers were square. In 1886 he claims to have 1651bs. pressure in his boilers, but if so, his ship was well ahead of her time, since it was not till some four years later that pressures rose to 160lbs. His ship is of 6000 tons and the engines 7000 horse power, and with that pressure certainly of triple expansion type. She carried passengers to New Zealand via the Cape, not calling at Australian ports, and returned to England by way of the Horn, calling at Rio. Scratch a Scot and you find a theologian, so we need not be surprised at the jumble of mechanics and metaphysics which makes up his musing. With all the gusto of a very young Oxford Grouper, he wallows in the enormity of his youthful depravity and sub- sequent reconversion. " First that night in Hell " ! ! Lord gie us a guid conceit o'oorselves ! The latter phen- omenon took place, we deduce, soon after the former, that is about 1845, the scene being the Barrier Reef. A DISCREPANCY. Since the first steamship came to Australia in 1852, there is a dis- crepancy somewhere, but when deal- ing with the miraculous, we need not split chronological hairs. Now who was Elsie Campbell, who died when M'Andrew was about 36 ? Perhaps his wife, perhaps his sweetheart. She may well have died in despair of bringing the cautious Glaswegian up to the marrying point after a courtship of interminable years of pedestrianism, partings and reunions. But if I seem to make fun of M'Andrew, I can understand him and particularly so where he finds himself tongue-tied before the splendour of his engines, for true emotion is always inarticu- late. " They're grand, they're grand " is all he can offer in praise while his heart is bursting with unspoken pæons. He turns to his national poet who alone could compass that trip-hammer strain. No minor poet certified by Traill can do justice to that theme. It requires the music of Robbie Burns to match with Scotia's noblest speech " yon orchestra sublime." This is no mere vain imagining. To many Scots poetry began and ended with Burns, who is their idol. Does not Ian Hay speak of being nearly dirked at a Caledonian dinner for saying that " before ye " was a poor rhyme for Loch Lomond ? I remember well my first job as a young man, when I was torn from a warm bed to take the night shift on the switch-board of a power house lying miles away on the banks of a tidal estuary. The previous incumbent, in misplaced zeal to finger death at his gloves' end, had done so only too thoroughly and his singed remains had been removed to the morgue. The machinery shut down after midnight, and I prepared for my supper. To me approached the Shift Engineer, a tubby middle- aged ex-marine man from the Clyde, bearing in his hand a thick red volume. He explained in broad Scots that he had undertaken to recite " Tam o' Shanter " at a forthcoming nicht wi' Burns, and was far from word perfect. Would I take the book and correct him as he said his piece ? And he strode up and down the elevated gallery of that vast empty hall waking the echoes with praise 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 of Tam and Cutty Sark for an hour or more till he could say it through with no faltering or mistake. Och aye, the Scot loves Burns, but had Robbie and not Kipling written the Hymn, it might have resembled Holy Willie's Prayer and given us more interesting but less edifying autobiographical detail. I would draw your attention to apparently the most humble part of the mechanism in M'Andrew's Charge. " Not unto us the praise, O Lord, the sweating thrust-block says " and indeed it got no praise but plenty of curses. Of all the mechanisms that go to make a steamer's engine room the old-fashioned thrust-block was the most unsatis- factory and frustrating. THE THRUST-BLOCK. The thrust-block is of course a bearing,—that is, two metal surfaces, one pressing on the other and revolv- ing, while between the surfaces exists a pressure of many tons, the thrust of the propeller driving the ship through the water. To lubricate those surfaces was the engineer's hardest task because the science of the action of oil in a bearing was not then under- stood. But you must particularly remember the thrust-block because in that same year 1886, all unknown to M'Andrew or any other marine engineer, science was asserting her- self, and in an English laboratory a new theory was emerging which was to revolutionise marine engineer- ing, of which more anon. There are other marine engineers who figure in Kipling's pages, but I must leave them to speak for themselves. They represent a body of men who in peace and war, and particularly in this war, have shown that like their opposite numbers in the Navy, they can show a quiet cold-blooded courage in the face of particularly horrible forms of death. The men, and now some women, who go to sea in engine rooms and stoke holds, must "bide in the heart of an eight day clock, for the death that they cannot see." And when required, bide there they do, whether they bring their battered hulls into port, or go down, or " die in the peeling steam." The Mary Gloster is interesting, dealing as it does with the develop- ment of steamship building. The chronology must be assumed but is definitely wrong in one particular since Sir Anthony speaks of using steel, which did not appear in merchant ships till 1879. In the poem it appears in the lifetime of McCullough who died in the sixties. If by " ex- pansion " he meant triple expansion engines, they did not appear till 1880. He may, however have meant compound expansion, for the nomen- clature was not then standardised. (To be concluded) Stalky & Co's Successors IN VIRGINIA AMONG the many letters of sympathy received by Mrs. Dun- sterville in her bereavement, there is none more highly valued than that which came from Charleston, West Virginia, signed by four pupils of the High School there. It runs :— " To whom it may concern, We were deeply grieved to learn of the passing of General Dun- sterville and we wish to offer our deepest regret and condolences. During our term of High School we very closely (followed) the actions of the characters of Stalky and Co. We assumed the names of the major characters and to the best of our ability we followed the examples set by General Dun- sterville, Rudyard Kipling and the late G. C. Beresford. Again we wish to offer our great- est sympathy for your loss. Very sincerely Yours, Pret. Robert Riddle, AAF—Stalky, S. John W. Guy, USNR—Beetle, S William H. R. Hye, USNR— McTurk, Pret. Robert Howell, AAF— Dickson Quartus." October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 Kipling and the Germans by BASIL M. BAZLEY (This is the concluding part of an address to members of the Society in London by Mr. Bazley. The three previous instalments appeared in our issues of December, 1945, and April and July, 1946). HERE is a brief comment on atrocities :—" In both Belgium and France the Germans com- mitted cruelties hitherto unknown in civilised warfare, with the firm determination to inspire terror." Among minor horrors was the deli- berate fouling of beds and houses during the retreat, so as to cause as much trouble and expense as possible, though this, like many other German acts, can scarcely be said to have a military value. Now comes a bit of prophecy :—" Reduced to almost nothing by the First Battle of Ypres (mid-Oct. to mid-Nov., 1914), that army managed to prevent the enemy from driving it into the sea at Calais. If our adversaries could have done that, their heavy artillery would have rendered the Straits of Calais unten- able for English ships." ADVANCED TECHNIQUE. Now a note on the use of German submarines :—" The submarine had become a legal weapon; but it could not be legally employed against the merchant marine nor against hospital ships; and it is to their eternal shame that our enemies not only used these craft against the merchant ships and hospital ships of the Allies, but against those of neutrals with whom the Allies dealt. They sank these on sight, and often did not trouble them- selves to save the personnel. It was this that finally ranged the Americans on our side." Since this was written, the German technique in submarine warfare has advanced; the struggling crews and passengers from torpedoed ships have been fired on wholesale. Yet another note on deliberate damage useless in the military sense :— " But from every other point of view, the enemy bore themselves like the worst barbarians; cutting down the trees, smashing all machinery, flood- ing or caving in all the coal mines, and stealing everything from private houses that they could carry away, as though they had decided (as they had, and as they still impenitently feel) that France must never recover." The chapter concludes with a note on Hindenburg :—" At the moment these lines are written (1931), he stands alone among forces little worthy of confidence, among whom some cry loudly for revenge, and all of whom are anxious to escape the payment of their just debt to those whom they have ruined." BETWEEN THE WARS. March of 1933 saw the appearance of that very charming little book (first published as a series of news- paper articles), " Souvenirs of France." In this we get an illuminating record of German conduct between the two wars. As Kipling says, the first thing the Germans tried to do was to prove that they had not been to blame; you will remember Strese- mann's remark :—" Germany's great mistake in 1914 was in being too openly the aggressor." This is how Kipling puts it :—" Since the first need of the unrepentant sinner is to make ' a face for himself,' the first German manœuvre for position in the real war was to uproot the idea of Boche responsibility for the not-wholly-successful preliminary cam- paign. This they achieved in their own country by furious outcries and legislative enactments .... But their technique with the foreigner filled me with professional jealousy as a purveyor of fiction vastly inferior." Then follow some scathing remarks on the success of these moves in England, which we all know only too well, though they did not show the same skill in France—perhaps the people there were less receptive at that time :—" A certain amount of the same gas was liberated on the French front, but the national re- sponse was more feeble. The French were occupied with reconstruction, 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 the gyrations of the franc, and, as in England, with strikes. Also they knew more than we did of the measures the Boche was taking to rehabilitate himself materially. He borrowed on all sides to recondition his untouched factories and his quite adequate railways. This interested the United States enormously. They are even more interested to-day, but not so polite. I am no financial expert, but a gentleman with a camion .... on the Digne-Grenoble road was good enough to explain the system. ' Yes. He will borrow from all who will lend, and they will all go the same way. There is a fellow in our village doing the same thing. That is how he pays his debts. It is high finance. What you and I call civil banditry." We are shown plainly in another section of this same book, the evils of divided counsels among allies :— " There followed, presently, a passion- ate propaganda that ' Civilisation ' should ' put Germany on her feet ' because she was in economic ruin and her heart had changed. After ' civilisation ' had sufficiently studied that ruin and satisfied herself, at some cost, of the worthlessness of German currency, the mark returned to parity as a machine-gun re-hoists itself over the apparently abandoned trench. The manœuvre to abolish her internal debt cost Germany no more than a few thousand old and unusable persons wiped out, perhaps by starvation. It was magnificent, and it was the first step of the real war which began at a quarter-past eleven on the 11th November, 1918." CULT OF WAR. In May, 1935, Kipling made a last effort to open our eyes to the danger which, clear to him, was only seen " through a glass darkly " by the bulk of the nation :—" A little later in 1922 and 1923—on the heels, as you might say, of Rachel mourning for her children—our electorate was enlarged by the enfranchisement of all Englishmen over twenty-one, promising the removal of war and discomfort and the accidents of life from the lives of all our people. To this end we built up and are build- ing now gigantic organisations to control and handle the details of those lives. But we chose not to provide that reasonable margin of external safety without which the lowest standard of life cannot be maintained in this dangerously congested island. The world outside England had other pre-occupations. Like ourselves it had dealt with an opponent whose national life and ideals were based on a cult —a religion as it now appears—of war, which exacted that all his nation- als should be trained, at any cost, to endure as well as to inflict punish- ment. In this our opponent was excusable. He had won his place in civilisation by means of three well- planned wars waged within two generations. He had been checked somewhat in his fourth war, but soon after the close of it—in 1924 and 1925—he seemed to be preparing for the fifth campaign. In this also our opponent was excusable. His path was made easy for him. Stride for stride with his progress towards his avowed goal we toiled, as men toil after virtue, to cast away a half, and more than a half, of our defences in all three elements, and to limit the sources of their supply and their renewal." As we know, this parade of virtue was not followed, so Kipling continues :—" The past year or two has given birth to the idea that our example of State-defended defence- lessness has not borne much fruit, and that we have walked far enough along the road which is paved with good intentions. It is now arranged that in due time we will take steps to remedy our more obvious deficiencies. So far, good ! But if that time be not given to us—if the attack of the future is to be on the same swift ' all-in-all ' lines as our opponent's domestic administrations—it is possible that before we are aware our country may have joined those submerged races of history who passed their children through the fire to Moloch in order to win credit with their gods." Weighty words these, and, to our sorrow and pain, almost dis- regarded. It hardly seems possible to believe, but it is a fact, that, with the exception of the Times, there was hardly a mention of this speech in the principal newspapers of the country. What was said in " The Islanders " in 1902 was equally true in 1935, October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 CONCLUSION. This completes a fairly comprehen- sive, though not perhaps exhaustive review of Kipling's opinions about the German nation. There may be some who will regard his views as extreme; to them we may make the well-known reply, " The proof of the pudding is in the eating." We must not allow ourselves to forget that these opinions only extend as far as 1935; what he would have said if he had been alive to witness the degeneracy shown in the war which is just over may be left to the imagin- ation. We can only echo, in regard to the future, the lines in his " Re- cessional " :— Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! We cannot tell what particular point in the German character caused the greatest antagonism in Kipling's mind : their love of domination and bullying, their treachery, or their apparent delight in sheer cruelty. Whatever it was, it roused him to make the severely blunt statement in 1915 in his Southport speech (this he repeated some years later) :—" How- ever the world pretends to divide itself, there are only two divisions in the world to-day—human beings and Germans." (Concluded) Kipling Library Notes By W. G. B. MAITLAND ONE of the chief assets of the Society is the Library which I want to introduce to members, so from time to time I propose to select some special items and to try to describe in these columns their more interesting points in the hope that the subject will have some appeal to the keener students. The Library has grown and ex- panded to an ex- tent of which any literary society paying homage to a single author can be proud. As I have already written in a pre- vious article we have, after some twenty years of steady and care- ful collecting, amassed a very fine collection of Kiplingana, some of which is worthy of special atten- tion. Glancing along the shelves and making a random selection I choose Abaft the Funnel, JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING & Co., New York, 1909). Until the Sussex Edition was published in 1937- 1938 this collection of stories had never appeared in England, and has not done so even now in the usual Macmillan Uniform Edition. They were first collected in book-form in a " pirate " volume published in the U.S.A. by Dodge in 1909, who lifted them from the files of the Civil and Mili- tary Gazette of 1889. In order to protect himself Kipling ordered his regular pub- lishers, Double- day, Page & Co., of New York to bring out an exact- ly similar volume. Though perhaps of inferior literary merit compared to his other work these short sketch- es are a guide to his early post- (Doubleday, Page The poet's father. This portrait was Indian days. Al- included in the parcel of books and though we cannot papers recently presented to the Society's condone the mal- Library by Mrs. Groves, of Yetminster, practices of the On the reverse side, the portrait is American 'pirate' inscribed, "To John Campbell, from publishers at J. L. Kipling, Simla, 14 Aug., i883. whose hands Kip- 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 ling suffered so badly in the days be- fore the International Copyright Law, (read The Rhyme of the Three Captains), we owe the original perpetrator of this literary " crime " a debt of gratitude for making it possible for us to read a selection of Kipling's work which otherwise might have lain undetected in the dusty files of an old newspaper. As is well known, much of Kipling's early work appeared in the C. and M. G. and not all of it was signed. Consequently it is interesting to examine the contents of the Civil and Military Gazette Christmas Annual for 1936. Here we find The Mysti- fication of Santa Claus which was originally contributed over the initials " R. K." on 25th December, 1886 and described in the " Foreword " to the Annual as " a very character- istic piece of Kipling writing." Also reprinted are The City of Two Creeds, Hunting a Miracle and Mister Anthony Dawking. All bear Kipling's mark. The late Mr. E. Kay Robinson, Editor of the C. and M. G. when Kipling was on the staff, identified The City of Two Creeds as being by Kipling in an article he wrote for Pearson's Magazine, June, 1896, en- titled Kipling in India. Hunting a Miracle was reprinted in "The Smith Administration by Rudyard Kipling," (A. H. Wheeler, 1891), which the author immediately suppressed. Mister Anthony Dawking first appeared over the signature, " The Traveller " in the C. and M. G. on 11th Jan., 1888, and in Turnovers from the " Civil and Military Gazette" 1888- 1890. Another small volume, probably little known to the ordinary reader is The Eyes of Asia, (Doubleday, Page & Co., N.Y., 1918) of which there is no English edition. It con- sists of a set of four letters purporting to be from wounded Indian soldiers in hospital in England to their relatives in India. These letters were first printed in the Morning Post and the Saturday Evening Post in 1917, and describe the soldiers' daily life in hospital and experiences in France during the war. Written in ver- nacular style they bring the scene sharply before the reader. Bearing in mind Kipling's affection for, and knowledge of the Indian soldier, it seems strange this book was never published in England. Mention should also be made of several other books which, although they have been previously described in earlier numbers of the Journal, are of more than usual interest and importance and must therefore be included in these Notes. These are, Kipling's College by William Carpenter, the late Ellis Ames Ballard's beautiful book describing his famous Kipling collection, Rear-Admiral Chandler's A Summary of the Works of Rudyard Kipling and the Sussex Edition. Now that the Society has found permanent quarters it has at last been possible to re-organise the Library into a more readily accessible form than was feasible during the war, and to restore to their proper places on the shelves those items of value which for reasons of safety, were removed to the country. I hope those members who have genuine interest in Kipling will take an opportunity of visiting the Library to examine the many treasures it has been my pleasure and privilege to collect during the years I have be?n Hon. Librarian. (In our next issue we hope to refer in detail to the books recently presented to the Library by Mrs. Groves of Yetminster. As mentioned in the July, 1946 number of this Journal, the gift includes several first editions of Kipling's works—a little book of sonnets and lyrics by his mother and sister (Mrs. Fleming) and three of the shilling Railway Library volumes in paper covers.—Ed. K. J.) Members of the Kipling Society who possess letters, press cuttings, photographs or sketches associated with Rudyard Kipling and his works, which they think might be suitable for publication in the Journal, are invited to send particulars to the Hon. Editor, The Kipling Journal, Lincoln House, London Road, Harrow-on-the-Hill. In the case of cuttings from overseas publications, senders are asked to obtain formal permission to reprint from the Editors of the journals concerned, for which due acknowledgment will be made in " The Kipling Journal." October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. " AN EPISODE AT FOLLY BRIDGE" DURING the early portion of the Boer War I was a War Correspondent for a number of South African newspapers and met Kipling on an interesting occasion. It was on the train going from Cape Town to Bloemfontein. Kipling, Mr. (afterwards Sir Lewis) Michel, General Manager of the Standard Bank of South Africa, his Secretary, and myself were the only civilians on the train. Mr. Michel had been sent for by Lord Roberts to help him with the finances of the Orange Free State and, therefore, had to use a term much heard of in these days, high priority. When we reached Norval's Pont we were detained by a Major who was in command there for twenty- four hours in a most arbitrary manner. He refused to give any reason or to discuss it in any way. We were naturally indignant and I, being very young, wrote an account of it for my papers in a rather crude manner. Kipling also wrote an account which appeared in the " People's Weekly," which I think was published in Dundee, which he called " An Episode at Folly Bridge." He sent me a copy of it which to my great regret was destroyed by fire when my home was burned down some years ago. The difference in treatment was such that it taught me a lesson which I trust I have benefited by in later years. His sense of proportion was so outstanding. He, I fear, had read my account.— Cecil J. Sibbett, African Life Build- ings, St. George's Street, Cape Town. "JANE'S MARRIAGE." Surely the identity of " Sir Walter " in " Jane's Marriage " has been settled by Kipling's own acknowledgment that he made an error and overlooked the date when he wrote the poem in which the reference is to Sir Walter Scott. I note that in the October number of The Kipling Journal, Mrs. Rhoda E. Brown, of Melbourne, advances the idea, often previously suggested, that Kipling's reference was to Sir Walter Raleigh. But the " excellent reason " referred to by Mrs. Brown does not appear. The definite proof of Kipling's mild anachronism may be found in a letter from T. H. L. Hony of Fowey, Corn- wall, in The Sunday Times of 30th April, 1939, in which Mr. Hony writes : " The question of the identity of the " Sir Walter " referred to was raised some years ago when Kipling was alive, so I wrote him on the subject. I received from him a very nice reply, written with his own hand and signed (I have the letter still) in which be acknowledged the error and said it was Sir Walter Scott he meant, but he had overlooked the date." That should settle the matter. —N. Lawson Lewis, The Rowfant Club, Cleveland, U.S.A. Forgive my bringing up once more the subject of Jane's Marriage, men- tioned in the Journal, Nos. 72, 73, 75. A point which seems to have been very little noticed in various discussions of the third and fourth lines is that the Definitive Edition of Verse gives an altered reading of them. In Debits and Credits and in Inclusive Verse 1885-1932 the lines run : " Good Sir Walter met her first, And led her up the stair." Now in the Definitive Edition they run : " Good Sir Walter followed her, And armed her up the stair." It would therefore appear that be- tween 1932 and his death, Kipling corrected his mistake about the date of Scott's death and that his replies to criticism of the original version were not meant seriously. In a recent broadcast the American team in the Transatlantic Quiz pro- gramme were asked to name three people who met Jane when she " went to Paradise." They could only name Cervantes (" Miguel.") To turn to another subject, the letter from the late Mr. C. Graves in the Journal No. 76, shows a slight 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL October, 1946 lapse of memory on his part. Kip- ling contributed three odes, not one, to the Fifth Book of Horace. In- cidentally, four additional odes are to be found in Debits and Credits.— F. A. Underwood, 51, Charnock Avenue, Wollaton Park, Nottingham. KIPLING AND THE ENGINEERS. I do not know what edition of "The Day's Work" Mr. R. M. Harvey quotes from on p. 13 of the Kipling Journal of July, 1946, but in the first printing of " Bread Upon The Waters " in the Graphic Xmas number for 1896; the first edition of " The Day's Work " published on Oct. 7th, 1898; and the first American edition of 1898, all now open before me the word in each case is " simple." Therefore, if it is a nonsensical word, it is not my nonsense. How in the name of fair criticism and right reading can the Vice- President of the Melbourne Branch overlook the words :— " Lashed in our old deck-cabin, with all three port-holes wide, The kick of the screw beneath him, and the round blue seas outside " when, though dead, Sir Anthony imagines himself hearing the sounds of the Mary Gloster sinking with him, as he " Lies in his standing bed." Up to the present I have never known the poem to be read otherwise. The raising of engineers to be Master Mariners, Quartermasters, Theologians, etc., is too common a trick of Kipling's to be commented upon. McPhee is virtually master of the " Kite " with Bell a yes-man of the most arresting type. Crews on Kipling's, ships are faint " noises off." In his haste Mr. Harvey misquotes the Sermon on the Mount. Both mote and beam were in relation to eyes, not to each other, consequently it would be nonsense indeed for me to " point out the mote in my neigh- bour's beam."—T. E. Elwell, Regent House, Truth Promenade, Ramsey, Isle of Man. "THE MONUMENT IS STILL THERE." I enclose a review of a book about Rudyard Kipling. I remember a certain poetic essayist whose greatest claim to fame was the criticism of one of the poems of our great author. A writer relative to one of our great heroes makes some very unwarranted criticism seemingly to create attention and to advertise his book. A reporter called on Pres. Coolidge to ask if he thought the fame and great esteem of America toward our beloved Geo. Washington was diminishing, as several books had deprecated our honour toward our first President. Coolidge turned in his chair, looked out at the noble shaft of commemora- tion to the one that was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, and remarked " The monument is still there." So we don't hear of libraries throw- ing out the works of our author. He was quoted many times in the war. A noted Editor on our Western coast said "I do not know why but when I have the joy of leisure to read I turn to again and again the ever- lasting work of our great author, go to sea among the fish in Captain Courageous, and to the hot interesting roads of India with Kim. Even a foreigner feels a flush and a joyous martial reverberation as he reads the songs of England written by Kipling. Fading, Shakespeare is not always on Broadway, but he continues to come. Not proven is the verdict.—Paul E. Vernon, 348, Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. (The enclosure to which our corre- spondent refers relates to Mr. Hilton Brown's book " Rudyard Kipling " reviewed in an American publication by Mr. James Hilton.—Ed.) The Council hopes that Members will continue to interest their friends in the work of the Kipling Society, and propose them as members. There are many thousands of readers of Kipling in various parts of the world whose names do not yet appear in our Membership List. They are heartily invited to join. Details may be obtained on application to The Hon. Secretary, The Kipling Society, 105, Gower St., London, W.C.l. October, 1946 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 The Society's Annual Conference THE Annual Conference of the Kipling Society for the year 1946 was held on the 19th June, when the following business was transacted :— 1. Resolutions of sympathy were passed in connection with the deaths of Major General Dunsterville, our former President, and of Mr. Russell Colman, one of our Vice-Presidents, who bequeathed a legacy of £100 to the Society. A further resolution was also passed recording our mem- bers' high appreciation of the honour done to the Society by Viscount Wavell, in accepting the invitation to become our new President. 2. Sir Christopher Robinson, who presided, reported upon the Society's progress, and called attention to the need for maintaining our membership, in view of the fact that the interest of the coming generation in Kipling tended to diminish. He announced that our Honorary Librarian had made arrangements whereby the library would in future be thoroughly re-organized, card-indexed and gen- erally laid out in a way which should be of great assistance to members desiring to consult it and to look up references. In the discussion which followed, a member suggested that a corporate membership for schools should be considered at attractive rates. 3. The President, Vice-President and Honorary officers were all re- elected for the coming year, as were the honorary Auditors, to whom a vote of thanks was passed for their valuable and kindly help to the Society over financial matters during the past year. Messrs. Bazley, Collins and Martindell retired from the Council under our Rules, and would not be eligible for re-election until next year; Mrs. George Bambridge, Miss Florence MacDonald, Mr. Victor Bonney and Sir Charles Wingfield were confirmed as new members of the Council. At the Special Council Meeting which takes place under our Rules immediately after the Conference, Mr. Victor Bonney was, on the pro- posal of the out-going Chairman, seconded by Mr. Brooking, unani- mously elected Chairman of the Council for the ensuing year. The Council decided to establish a corporate membership of the Society for schools. The subscription rate would be one guinea per annum, both for Home and Overseas schools, and all existing members of such schools would be entitled to attend members meetings and enjoy the other privileges of individual members other than the right of voting at Annual Con- ferences. The number of copies of the Kipling Journal to be sent to a school would be settled with the Headmaster. Bequests M "AY we remind those of our numerous readers who are un- able in these difficult times to help us as much as they would wish, that a practical way of assisting us to keep the memory of Rudyard Kip- ling green and to bring his great ideals before the coming generations of young people is for them to remem- ber the Kipling Society in their Wills ? Such legacies afford proof of a desire that our work should go on beyond the span of the donor's life- time and afford great encouragement to those who believe that the creed of Kipling is everlasting. The following simple form of bequest should be used : " I bequeath to The Kipling Society, 100, Gower Street, London, W.C.l. a sum of (£ ), free of duty, to be applicable for the general purposes of the Society. And I declare that the receipt of the Hon. Treasurer or other proper official for the time being of the Society shall be a good and sufficient discharge or my Exe- cutors." W. H. Houldershaw, Ltd., Printers, 49-55, London Road, Southend-on-Sea.