Rudyard Kipling | Page 7

down to something in nature that included the East

with the West, the First with the Twentieth century, was naturally
strong in one who was born between two nations; and it was an instinct
which drove Mr Kipling in the opposite direction from that in which his
contemporaries were moving. While Mr Kipling's generation was
learning to analyse, refine and interrogate, to become super-subtle and
incredulous, to exalt the particular and ignore the general, to probe into
the intricate and sensitive places of modern life, Mr Kipling was
looking at mankind in the mass, looking back to the half-dozen realities
which are the stuff of the poetry of every climate and period--to love of
country which is as old as the waters of Babylon, to the faith of
Achates, and the affliction of Job. While Mr Kipling's contemporaries
have been working towards minute studies of individuals and groups,
Mr Kipling has been content to catch the metal of humanity at the flash
point, to wait for the passionate moment which reveals all mankind as
of one kindred. "We be of one blood, ye and I"--the phrase of the
Jungle holds.
To find here evidence of a bias merely political, of an attitude
reactionary and hostile to the progress o the world, is to deny sense and
meaning to the greatest literature of the world. Mr Kipling's instinctive
simplifying of life he shares with the immortals. It is, as we shall see,
the immortal part of him. To write of Mr Kipling as though he
celebrates the ape and the tiger; extols the Philistine and the brute; calls
always for more chops--"bloody ones with gristle"; delights in the
savagery of war, and ferociously despises all that separates the
Englishman of to-day from his painted ancestor--this is the mistake of
critics who cannot distinguish the cant of progress from its reality.
We shall be driven more particularly to consider Mr Kipling's atavism
in discussing his tales of the British Army. For the present we are
dealing only with India and the "Imperialism" which some of Mr
Kipling's critics have taken for an offensive proof of his political
prejudice. Mr Kipling's treatment of the Anglo-Indian, and of the
dealing of the Anglo-Indian with the Indian Empire, has nothing to do
with the Yellows and the Blues. The real motive of Mr Kipling's
attitude towards the men on the frontier, in places where deadly things
are encountered and there is work to be done, is no more a matter of

politics, "progressive" or "reactionary," than is his celebration of the
Maltese Cat or of .007. "The White Man's Burden" is the burden of
every creature in whom there lives the pride of unrewarded labour, of
endurance and courage. In India this pride has to be wholesomely
tempered with humility; for India is old and vast and incomprehensible,
to be handled with care, to be approached as a country which, though it
shows an inscrutably smiling face to the modern world, has the power
suddenly to baffle its modern rulers by opening to them glimpses of an
intricate and unassailable life which cannot be ruffled by Orders in
Council or disturbed by the weak ploughing of teachers from the West.
The task of the Anglo-Indian administrator is, indeed, the finest
opportunity for that heroic life to the celebration of which Mr Kipling
has devoted so many of his tales. This hero has a task which taxes all
his ability, which promises little riches and little fame, and is known to
be tolerably hopeless. It offers to him a supreme test of his virtue--a test
in which the hero is accountable only to his personal will; whose best
work is its own reward and comfort.
"Gentlemen come from England," writes Mr Kipling in one of his
Indian tales, "spend a few weeks in India, walk round this great sphinx
of the Plains, and write books upon its ways and its work, denouncing
or praising it as their ignorance prompts. Consequently all the world
knows how the Supreme Government conducts itself. But no one, not
even the Supreme Government, knows everything about the
administration of the Empire. Year by year England sends out fresh
drafts for the first fighting-line, which is officially called the Indian
Civil Service. These die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried
to death, or broken in health and hope, in order that the land may be
protected from death and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually
become capable of standing alone. It will never stand alone; but the
idea is a pretty one, and men are willing to die for it, and yearly the
work of pushing and coaxing and scolding and petting the country into
good living goes forward. If an advance be made, all credit is given to
the native,