Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1283 page)

It may be said that the “ Recessional “ is symbolical, but, when using the terms of the Christian tradition for Englishmen, and in so momentous a connection, a poet has hardly more right to be symbolic than a clergyman in using those terms. Englishmen either don’t understand, or are further strengthened in their natural hypocrisy; and the use of Christian terminology in England is sufficiently charged with hypocrisy without poets adding to it. Why not speak the truth? Conquests do not result from the exercise of the Christian virtues, but from their direct opposites; and, broadly speaking, the men who have made the British Empire may have been Christians in their private hours, but, while they did the public business, they were many very different things besides. Of course, faithfully speaking, there has never been a Christian nation, and never will be. A really Christian nation could not exist five minutes. In this matter of English conquests another living poet, Mr. William Watson, has challenged the “ Recessional “ with unanswerable wit:

“Best by remembering God, say some,

We keep our high imperial lot —

Fortune, I think, has mainly come,

When we forgot — when we forgot.”

To sec how little Englishmen welcome the real Christian ideal in national poetry one has but to compare the reception of the “Recessional” and “The White Man’s Burden “ with the languid reception given to Mr. William Watson’s noble Armenian sonnets. There was a white man’s burden, if you like. There was a work to do on which the Lord God of Hosts had surely smiled. But no! we stood to lose in Armenia. But we have no objection to taking up the white man’s burden in the Soudan — where we stand to gain. Perhaps it must be admitted that interference in Armenia was too perilous for the general peace of the world for us to undertake. The earth cries out with sad, irremediable things, terrible cruelty and injustice, before which we can only wring our hands in utter helplessness. There is a frightful something in the working of the Universe, the operations of which we can but insignificantly stay. That nations as well as individuals — even strong “Christian” nations — must sometimes recognise this is obvious; but, having stayed our hand in Armenia, we must not talk of taking up the white man’s burden till we can convince, say, France, that we have conquered the Soudan with the single-minded intention of benefiting the Soudanese. That it may be for the ultimate good of the Soudanese (if sufficient remain upon whom to form an average) is really beside the point of Christian jingoism. Like any other nation we conquer countries for the purely selfish and natural purpose of extending our trade. It is a natural law; but it is not a Christian proceeding, and we are the only Christian nation that pretends it is.

One is really inclined to believe that America took Cuba from Spain from something like Christian motives; and one may believe, too, that her annexation of the Philippines is a reluctant second move made necessary by the first. She has a certain right then, perhaps, to talk of taking up the white man’s burden; but, presently, when the wealth of the Philippines begins to pour into the hands of American traders, America will begin to sec (no doubt with innocent surprise) how small is the cost of taking up the white man’s burden compared with the subsequent profit — and then it is to be feared she may hanker after more such burdens.

I have not meant to imply for a moment that Mr. Kipling is consciously insincere in his vein of sacred Imperialism. At the same time one must be allowed to criticise an attitude so at variance with the temper of the bulk of his work. Heretofore he has always been cynically, even brutally, realistic about the facts and methods of empire.

“Give ‘em hell! Oh, give ‘em hell! “ cried Dick Heldar in ecstasy as the armoured train met the nightly attack of a few Soudanese on its way through the desert. And “ give ‘em hell “ is the note of all the most typical Indian stories. Where, for example, in that vivid picture of a butcher’s shop called “The Drums of the Pore and Aft” is there a hint of pity for the Afghan — ” half savage and half child”? What is he but so much butcher’s meat for the noble British soldier to hack and hew, “ to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on a block “? The scoundrel to resist our invasion of his mountain homes! Not a hint of any civilised feeling for a noble race inevitably breaking, not before superior courage or physique, but merely superior cleverness and better machines. True, “he’s a first-class fighting man.”

But that’s all. Such is Tommy’s simple view, and Mr. Kipling’s is no less simple. Tommy’s is sheer primitive ignorance, iMr. Kipling’s is — what?

It may be, of course, that Mr. Kipling begins to repent of his sins of blood; but if we are to take his new doctrine seriously we must first see him advocating other methods of conquest. “ Give ‘em hell! Oh, give ‘em hell! “ and “ The White Man’s Burden “ are utterances that cannot go on being made side by side, without justifiable suspicions of cant, though, perhaps, another reason may be suggested, possibly the right one.

I have hinted elsewhere at a vein of sentimentality which runs throughout Mr.

Kipling’s work, curiously parallel with its uncompromising realism, and analogous to the vein of fantastic farce even more evident. In the story we have just referred to, the horrible cynicism of the battle picture is suddenly contrasted with as flagrant a piece of drummer-boy sentimentality as was ever perpetrated. The thing is half Kipling and half John Strange Winter. It is none the worse for that, except that the two halves don’t join, and while Mr. Kipling’s makes us believe all about the bloodshed, he does not make us believe in his drummer-boys. The one half is his own, the other half is a clever pastiche in another method which doesn’t come so natural to him. One has the “blood and tobacco” reality which Maisie complained of in Dick Heldar’s picture; the other reminds one of the nice, clean, pipe-clayed soldier, with shiny boots, which Dick Heldar painted in an ironical fit to please the British public. Many such contrasts of reality and fairy tale sentimentality may be found in Mr. Kipling’s writings, but this will suffice.

Now I think the same thing takes place at times in his thought. On one side he is a sad-hearted pessimist, much given to that “ cold rage “ that

“seizes one at whiles

To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth,”

—
and one may note his fondness for quoting James Thomson — on the other he reveals a strong vein of religious mysticism, now and again finding beautiful convincing expression, but at others degenerating into the clap-trap mysticism of such poems as the dedication to Wolcott Balestier before mentioned, and into a religious sentimentalism which we may, not impertinently, trace to the Wesleyanism known to jje in his blood.

It is quite possible for a man to believe two or more different things at once, or to think he believes them — which is about as deep as the roots of belief really go. He may, perhaps, give expression to the two or more beliefs side by side, without any insincerity. It is impossible, however, that the value of his utterances should not be diminished; and in spite of their great popular reception, and of their use politically, the “ Recessional “ and “ The White Man’s Burden “ mark not an increase, but a decrease of Mr. Kipling’s real authority. They are reactionary in the direction of sentimental superstition, and, however sincerely Mr. Kipling meant them, are serious reinforcements of British national hypocrisy.

But, of course, Mr. Kipling is nothing if not reactionary. If, on the one hand, he belongs to the age that invented the cinematograph and discovered the Ront- gen rays, he is no less a product of the age that has produced the Dreyfus Case; an age that has looked on cold-eyed at the massacre of the Armenians and the sup pression of the Finns; an age that is to see the re-opening of a bull-ring at Havre, a bull-ring, one reads, which is mainly to rely for its support on English visitors — one of the most unscrupulous ages of the world. At the present moment, as I have before had occasion to remark, in England — in fact, all over the world — the things of the mind are at a discount. There is in England just now a public opinion corresponding in no small degree to the present contempt in France for the “ intellectuels “; that is, for those who regard human life as something more than brute force, brutal rivalries, and brutal pleasures. We arc in the thick of one of the most cynically impudent triumphs of the Philistines the world has seen. All that should be meant by civilisation is a mock. The oncc kindly fields of literature are beneath the heels of a set of literary rough-riders. All the nobler and gentler instincts of men and women are ridiculed as sentimentality. All the hardwon gains of nineteenth-century philosophers are thrown to the winds; and for the minor ameliorations of science we have to pay with the most diabolical development of the foul art of war. Everywhere the brute and the bully — and for the ape and tiger truly a glorious resurrection!

For this state of things in England Mr. x/ Kipling is the most responsible voice. Of course, he did not create it. Such tidal moods of mankind go deeper than the influence of single personalities; or, indeed, if such cause them, they are usually long since dead, and the final effect springs from the cumulative power of their influence. Mr. Kipling’s is not a lonely voice crying to-day what all will feel to-morrow. He is the voice of the tide at its height. Yet if the mood creates the voice, the voice powerfully reinforces the mood. There is a captaincy in expression, and such is the responsibility of the voice. And, at all events, if the voice has no real responsi bility, one is obliged to treat it as though it had. Mr. Kipling stands for a certain view of life which some regret, and, as spokesman, is responsible for that view.

More than any other writer he has given expression to the physical force ideal at present fashionable, and the brutality inseparable from that ideal.

How far indeed have we wandered from the spirit of lines such as these:

“Have you numbered all the birds of the wood, Without a gun? Have you loved the wild rose — And left it on its stalk? O be my friend, and teach me to be thine wandered so far, indeed, that the very expression of it, though it be that of a great spiritual teacher, will, no doubt, to some appear silly in its gentleness.

One may recall Mr. Kipling’s u On Greenhow Hill” as a contrast. A native deserter had been troubling the camp at nights, and doubtless it was necessary that he should be caught and shot. However, entirely without instructions, Ortheris makes it known to his two friends that the game is to be his, and invites them to spend the day with him over against a valley along which every afternoon the deserter is known to make his way towards the camp. It is to be a sort of picnic, and meanwhile Mulvaney will oblige with a tale, or, as it proves on this occasion, Lea- royd, while the three lie under cover, Ortheris fondling his rifle, and always with his eye on the valley. With beer and pipes added, the little shooting party spend a pleasant afternoon waiting for Ortheris’s game. As the story ends, the story of Learoyd’s heart:

“Ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted; Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white crawled up the watercourse.

“‘ See that beggar? . . . Got ‘im.’

“Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big raven flapped out of the pinewood to make investigation.

“‘ That’s a clean shot, little man,’ said Mulvaney.

“Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away.

“‘ Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ him, too,’ said he.

“Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile of the artist who looks on the completed work.”

Now one understands that deserters have got to be shot, and that soldiers have no time to faint at the sight of blood, or shed tears upon their fallen foes. War is war, and among its hideous necessities is the making of men like Ortheris. That is understood. But it is one thing to accept a hideous fact, and another to glorify it. Though in this story Mr. Kipling makes no overt comment, presenting the picture simply and nakedly as a piece of life, there has yet crept into the telling, as in all his stories of the kind, a certain tone of approval, even gusto, which leaves one in little doubt of his own feeling. It is murder as one of the fine arts, and the victim is — hardly a dog. And if he does not exactly glorify this particular example, he certainly has done his best to glorify the barbarous system in which it is but a minor episode. He is unmistakably the drum and fife in modern literature.

The plain truth about Ortheris, as re vealed to us in this story, is that, whatever admirable qualities he possesses, and allowing that the blame is less his than the conditions that made him, he is simply a criminal with a gun license. His profession gives him the opportunity, in the name of fighting for his country, and protected by other such glittering euphemisms, to gratify that lust of murder which lies not too far below the surface in all human beings. He enjoyed killing that wretched native, as a sportsman enjoys bringing down a partridge. He was a little angry with the man because, as he put it, his “ beauty-sleep “ had been destroyed by the nightly disturbances, but so the thing became a trifle more pleasurable. Civilians are only allowed to shoot pheasants and such small game, and those under expensive restrictions,