The Manchester journal. [volume] (Manchester, Vt.) 1861-current, 1917-04-05

play a man part III the usltHCt VI ht'
great blessing Of liberty. There is no
a man in this country who is physi
cally fit to fight who ought not 10 bs
trained to fight Why should thu
country's defence be left TO volunteers
while all the rest of the country re-
mains comfortably at home making
money and enjoying life! We should
all know how 10 bear arms and all be
equally liable to service.
A good many years ago Rudyard
Kipling was sneered at as an imper-
ialist and militarist simply because he
told his countrymen the truth. Now
Englishmen-except those who in this
country are lecturing, or writing
books for hire-know that he was
right. II England had had an army
such as she should have had, and
might have had, Germany never would
have started this war. In his poem,
"The Islanders" Kipling says:
Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed
by your leaden seas,
Long did we wake in quiet and long lie
down at ease;
Till We said of strife, What is ~ OF
the sword, at is far from our
KEN;
Till We made sport of your shrunken
hosts and toy of your armed
men.
Ye stopped your ears to the warning
you would neither look nor heed
Ye set your leisure before their toll
and your lusts above their need.
Because Of your witness learning and
your beasts of warren and chase,
Ye grudged your sons to their service
and your fields for their camping
place.
II England had had million men to
pour into Belgium at the outbreak Of
the war, the Allies might long since
have dictated terms to the Hohenzol-
lerns, the greatest enemies to freedom
the world has known since Napoleon.
But the English were very like us.
Kipling says Of them:
Given to strong delusion, wholly be-
lieving a lie,
Ye saw that the land lay fenceless,
and we let the months go by
Waiting some easy wonder; hoping
some saving sign
Idle-openly idle--in the lee of the
forespent line,
Idle-except for your boasting-and
what is your Boosting worth
If We grudge a year of service to the
lordliest life on earth?
Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on
cycle set,
Life so long untroubled, that We who
inherit forget
1t was not made with mountains, it is
fOt Ollc Will lllC uSSp.
Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not
gods, must keep.
Men, not children, servants, or kins-
folk called from afar,
But each man born in the island broke
to the matter of war.
and by custom taken and
trained for the same;
Each man born in the island entered
at youth to the game
AS it were almost cricket, not to be
mastered in haste,
But after trial, labor, by temperance,
living chaste.
That surely should be the ideal of
self governing and liberty loving
people. Of course there are arguments
IN the other side. Kipling puts them
hus:
But we say, 1T will mar our comfort.
Ye say, at will minish our trade"
10 We wait for the spattered shrapnel
ere we learn how gun is laid?
Tor the low, red glare to southwark
when the raided coast towns
burn?
Light We shall have on that lesson,
but little time to learn.)
Will we pitch some white pavilion, and
Justly even the odds,
With nets and hoops and mallets, with
rackets and bats and rods?
viii the rabbit war with your foemen
and the red deer horn them for
hire?
our kept cock pheasant keep you P
he is lord Of many shire.
Kipling, as we have said, has been :
enounced as an imperialist. But, as
matter of fact, he is one of the
reatest lovers of liberty, as men of
ur great English race have under
tood it, of our time. Those who )
oubt this, who are mostly English !
len lecturing in this country, when
icy ought to be in the trenches,
ould do well to read his '
lperb poem entitled "The Old Issue"
a 4