The Indianapolis journal., 1902-02-09
KIPLING MIsREADs HISTORY.
His Critics Have Missed the Chief
Point of His Offending.

New York Press.
All of Mr.. Kipling's critics have now
been heard from, we believe in defense of
their island and in assault upon his island
ers. From the most vividly yellow of
daiies to the dullest drab of Saturday
afternoon weeklies the English press has
had its fling at the man who revived a
somewhat waning celebrity with the appli-
cation of the phrase ''hanneled fools and
muddled OATS" to the votaries of Britain's
favorite sports.
Yet, unless we have missed it, there has
been nowhere the most obvious possible of
responses made to the gravamen of the
poets accusation-the charge of decadence.
That is contained specifically in the lines:
What is your boasting worth
If ye grudge a year of service to the lord
liest line on earth?
Ancient, effortess, ordered, cycle on cycle
set
Life so long untroubled that ye who in
herit forget
1t was not made with the mountains; it is
not one with the deep.
Men, not gods. devised it, Men, not gods,
must keep"
Men devised 1t, indeed, but when the poet
comes to argue, as he does impliedly, that
they so devised by giving themselves free
ly to military service, he most singularly
miSreads the whole of modern English his
tory. There never was a British War Office
since the elder Pitts day which did not
stand in the same need of a poetic recruit
ing sergeant as Lord Salisburys did before
MIR. Kipling volunteered for the duty.
Those casually acquainted with English
literature will recall TennysOns resonant
drumming for the volunteer riheman move
ment of forty-odd years ago. That another
laureate was exercised in the same manner
we have recently had interesting proof in
the publication of the letters of Robert
SOuthey Thus did the English poet who,
in militant TOryism though nothing else,
was the kipling or mis- time, anguish his
soul for his country when engaged in far
more prOtracted, and for years less sue
cessful foreign war than that now being
waged in South Africa. 1t was in 1909 that
he wrote to a friend of the Peninsular cam
paign
yet by the living God, an able minister
might in six months time hang up Bona
parte for the Spanish crows to feed upon,
and reduce France within her ancient linn
its, by sending our whole military force
into Spain. No man who knows what the
French are, what the SpaniardS are and
what the English are, can doubt this Now
is the time to put out this fire which has
ravaged Europe, now when we can fairly
get at il. Yet when we should be playing
all our engines upon IL, we do nothing more
than send the maids TO empty their cham
ber pots there. On such an occasion as this
England might spare 10000 men, for it is
as much our own cause as If it were upon
our own ground. l would land 100, 900 of
them behind BonaDarte, seize the passes
anO shut him IN Spain, ana send the rest
to fiGht him there"
His complaint was OF the government
not of the people Yet it was the same
complaint. The Perceval Ministry. luke
warm and inefficient as it was. had no 15O.-
600 men TO send to Spain. It's immediate
successor had nct $1,000 to send to Belgium
TO win Waterloo. Its predecessors of a gen
Grafton before had TO hire Hessians to send
to America AL through the Napoleonic
wars the same method had To be pursued
of paying alien soldiers, of subsidizlng for
eign governments. The same dearth of re-
cruits paralyzed British arms in the Cri-
mea. The British have always been, as we
so frequently say OF ourselves, "a warlike
but not a military people" But no one up
10 Mr. Kipung's time has ever suggested
cricket and football as the causes of this
national shOrtconing, If shortcoming it is
In q word. men devised" the British en-
pire by supplementing the excellent work
of the sailor and the trader with the same
faulty military methods by which they are
now trying to keep" il. Mr. Kipling's
country Is going on in the same old way
and it is a little strange. we think. that
none of Mr.. kiplings countrymen should
have noted 1t.