The Omaha guide., 1936-02-01
KELLY MILLER
SAYS
.RUDYARD KIPLTNG AND HIS
NEGRO REAERS

phasis and start to the ~quickening
of racial arrogance which has Gull
minated today in Hitler's attitude
toward the Jews. He was the lit
erary forerunner and counterpart
of Lothrop Stoddard and Madison
Grant who gave psuedo scientific
and sociological sanction to the
Nordic Myth. Kipling's "Take Up
the White Mans Burdens" and
Stoddard's "Rising Tide of Color"
r companion pieces of mischief
in stirring up strife among the
and nations of mankind.
1 first became acquainted with
Rudyard Kipling through an in
terview given out by him in San
Francisco in the early nineties. 1t
seemed as if he had ONE misun-
Outstanding with a colored waiter.
IN describing the affair he stated,
as [ now recall his words, "Let me
stop here and curse the whole Ne
gro race Since then the poet of
the barracks and barroom has ris-
en- to be a star Of the first magni-
tude in the literary armament. I
have read his writings which I
have greatly admired and fire.
%quently quoted, but always with
his racial bias as a reserve in the
back part Of my mind.
Kipling possessed a local, ma
tional patriotic and racial; but
not a world mind. He was the poet
of circumstances, surroundings
and conditions, but not of the uni
versal strivings Of the human spi-
rit. He could hardly separate the
circumstantial from the essential,
the temporal from the eternal. He
was the poet of the concrete and
not of the abstract; he dealt with
man as a biological being but not
with mankind as a spiritual entity.
IL perchance he reached imperial
heights, where race and color dis
appeared, the flight was inciden-
tai to the emphasis of his narrow
national or racial purpose. Such
flights were never sustained; but
he suddenly sank into himself on
the lower plane of flesh and blood.
Robert Burns, on the other hand
was much more narrowly limited
and cireumscribed in his environ
ment than Kipling. The genius of
the poet of Scotland, however, rose
swiftly above his limited environ
ment and swept the whole horizon
around him and the skies above
him. With him, Scotia was but a
local setting Of universal truth
which emerged, from the back
ground of provincial environment.
You might search the entire of
Kipling's writings in vain for a
line that is comparable in univer-
salty of thought and ideal to
Burns:
"For a that and a. that; it's COM
ing yet, for a. that,
That man to man the world DER
shall brothers be for a that"
With Kipling, mortality and eth
les are limited by latitude and race
He does not appreciate the exist
ence of "a law of God or man
north of SO" nor the validity of
the Ten Commandments EAST of
the Suez."
His horizon was not only limit
ed by the latitude of race but by
sex as well. OF all the great poets,
he stands practically alone in ig-
noring sex appeal as a source of
poetic inspiration. His highest
conception of woman is: "a rag
and a bone and a hank of hair"
Falling back on the bald, biologi-
cal anology he us that
"The female of the spicies is more
deadly than the male" The near
est he comes to recognizing the
universal claim of womanhood is
when he tells us that Judith
O'Grady and the colonel's lady are
sisters under the skin"
Kipling never appreciated spir-
itual values. He never so much as
lifted his eyes to heaven. He recog-
nized neither the f~atherhood of
God nor the brotherhood of man.
In his "Recessional" bombastic
appeal is made to the "Lord, God
of Nations" but only in the sense
that Cicero was in the habit of
rhetoricaly invoking "The Immor-
tai Gods" to complete his rounded
periods. But even at that, Kip
ling's appeal to deity was only to
protect his own nation in its far
flung battle line and its ill-gotten
2 ~