Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated), page 846
British patience and courage triumphed over all. As we conquered them, so we enrolled in our Indian army all the best fighting men of these various races; of that army the Sikhs are now the backbone; but the Afghans have still to be kept at bay beyond the northern mountains. They are the “tigers from the
North”; and, if our rule were for a moment taken away, they would ‘ sweep down and slay and enslave all the defenceless dwellers on the plains.
In 1857 our carelessness and mismanagement of this vast Empire, together with the religious fear inspired among the Indians by the introduction of European inventions such as steam and railways, brought about the most serious danger that ever threatened British India, a mutiny in our Indian army. The instigator of the revolt was a man who claimed to be the representative of the old Mahratta rulers; the rebels took Delhi, the oldest capital city of
India, and set up a shadow of an Emperor.
They perpetrated terrible cruelties upon defence-less Englishwomen and children. But Southern
India remained perfectly loyal and quiet; so did several of the old native princes; while the gallant Sikhs and the Ghoorkas of Nepaul came to our help in crowds. British troops were poured in as fast as possible, though in those days that was not very fast. The siege of Delhi and the relief of Lucknow were the greatest feats that were performed; and the names of John Lawrence, John Nicholson,
Colin Campbell and Henry Havelock became forever immortal. When the mutiny was finally put down in 1858 the Crown took over the sovereignty from the East India Company,
which ceased to exist; and, twenty years later,
Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India.”
Another “Eastern” state, much nearer home, came to us in 1882, Egypt. It was sorely against the will of our statesmen that it came. Egypt had, till 1840, been a province of the Turkish Empire, and had since that date been most shockingly misgoverned by a series of Mahommedan rulers, called Khedives.
When, in 1869, the canal was cut by French engineers through the Isthmus of Suez, which separates the Red Sea from the Mediterranean,
and when a new route to India for the largest vessels was thus opened, it became of the firstimportance to us to keep this route safe and open. France at first shared with us the
“Protectorate” of Egypt which was then rendered necessary; but, when an insurrection of natives broke out in 1882, the task of suppressing it fell to us alone, and, when it was over, the sole Protectorate of Egypt became ours also. These were comparatively easy tasks, for the native Egyptian was not a good fighting man; but, as in India there is always a “tiger from the North” to be feared, so in
Egypt there was always a “lion from the
South.” By this “lion” I mean the fierce tribes of the desert which is called the “Soudan,” and of the Upper Nile Valley; they are
Mohammedans by faith and of mixed Arab and negro race. These wild men were always ready to spring upon the fertile valley of the Lower Nile. Our Ministers at home too often turned a blind eye to these dangers,
and their blindness cost us the life of the gallant general, Charles Gordon. It was not till 1898 that these “Soudanese” were finally subdued; and the Soudan is now governed by us as a dependency of Egypt.
The justice and mercy which these countries had not known since the fall of the Roman
Empire is now in full measure given to them by the British.
This great expansion of the British Empire during the last ninety-five years has not come about without a great deal of jealousy from the other European powers; and this jealousy was never more real or more dangerous than it is to-day. But the one European war which we have fought since 1815 had nothing to do with the expansion of our Empire.
The other nations have realized that this
Empire was founded on trade, that it has to be maintained by a navy, and that it has resulted in good government of the races subject to us. So, though they have envied us and given us ugly names, they have, on the whole, paid us the compliment by trying to copy us, to build up their navies, to increase their manufactures, to plant colonies and to govern subject races well. Some people think that they have not succeeded in this last object so well as ourselves. But all European nations are now keenly interested in trade rivalry;
whether this will end peaceably or not remains still to be seen.
All civilized nations, except ourselves and the Americans, have also set themselves to arm and drill all their citizens, so as to fit themselves for war on a gigantic scale at any moment.
If ever a great war breaks out in Europe, the nation that is most ready with its fleet and itsarmy will win; in the greatest war of the nineteenth century (that of 1870 between France and Germany) it needed only a telegram of two words to put the German army in motion in a few hours. On the other hand, all the great mechanical inventions of recent years,
railways, telegraphs, enormous guns, iron ships, airships, have made war, not only much more terrible, but infinitely more expensive;
and, so, each nation will naturally shrink from being the first to start a war, for defeat will spell absolute and irretrievable ruin. But I
don’t think there can be any doubt that the only safe thing for all of us who love our country is to learn soldiering at once, and to be prepared to fight at any moment.
The one European war which we fought in the nineteenth century was the “Crimean
War.” England and France fought Russia,
on behalf of Turkey, in 1854-6. The Turkish
State was believed to be crumbling, and certainly the Turks were real barbarians, who governed their provinces very badly; and,
being Mohammedans, they denied all justice to their Christian subjects. Russia claimed to protect these subjects, but every one knew that she only did this in order to swallow as much of the Turkish Empire as she could.
All other powers dreaded Russia, a half bar-barous state of vast size, and full of very brave,
if very stupid, soldiers. Some people think that the cunning Frenchmen led England by the nose into this war, and that it was no business of ours. It was fought in the peninsula of the Crimea, on the northern coast of the
Black Sea. There were some terrible battles,
those of the Alma, of Balaclava, of Inkermann, in the autumn of 1854; then the war settled into a long siege of Sebastopol, during an awful winter, in which the sufferings of our army in the trenches before the city were terrible. In the end Russia had to own herself beaten, and Turkey, whom people called the
“Sick Man of Europe,” was propped up again.
Though many of his other provinces have revolted from him, he is still alive, and now even in a fair way to recover his health, and to govern more decently than before.
One point I have left till the last. When your great-grandfathers were young, the fastest method of travelling was in a stagecoach with four horses at ten miles an hour,
or in a private (and very expensive) post-chaise which might perhaps do twelve miles an hour.
When they wanted to light their candles (and they had nothing else to light) they had to strike a spark with a bit of steel on a bit of flint. The navy was built of oak instead ofsteel, and moved by sails instead of steam.
Letters cost two pence apiece for the smallest weight and the smallest distance; a single sheet letter from London to Edinburgh cost Is. Id.
Look round you and see in what a different
England you now live. Gas was first used in the streets of London in 1812; but gas already is going, and electric light is taking its place. The first railway was opened in 1829
between Liverpool and Manchester; already people are wondering when the first service of passenger airships will begin to cut out railways for long journeys, as electric tramways and motor cars have begun to cut out horses and railways alike for short ones. The first steamship began to ply on the Clyde in 1812;
it was of three horse-power and moved at five miles an hour; the Mauretania, of 30,000
horse-power, now crosses the Atlantic in less than five days. During the Great War a system of wooden signals from hill top to hill top, worked by hand, would carry a message from Dover to London in about an hour; now the electric telegraph flashes messages round the world in a few minutes. By another kind of wire, the telephone, a man in London can talk to a man in Paris, and they can hear each other’s voices and laughter. The dis-covery of chloroform in 1847 has reduced human suffering to a degree which we can hardly conceive; and the other improvements in medicine and surgery have saved and prolonged countless useful, as well as many useless, lives.
The Secret of the Machines.
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit —
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play,
And now if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!
We can pull and haul and push and lift
and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and
heat and light,
We can run and jump and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!
Would you call a friend from half across the world?
If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,
You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled
Across the arch of heaven while you wait.
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?
You can start this very evening if you choose,
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
Of thirty thousand horses and some screws!
The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the Mauretania at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever ‘neath his hand,
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.
Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head
And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?
Do you want to turn a river in its bed,
And plant a barren wilderness with wheat?
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down
From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,
To work the mills and tramways in your town,
And irrigate your orchards as it flows?
It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down
and quake
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake!
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings —
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods! —
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth — except The
Gods!
Though our smoke may hide the Heavens
from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!
In the common sense of the word “ happy,”
these and a thousand other inventions have no doubt made us happier than our great-grandfathers were. Have they made us better,braver, more self-denying, more manly men and boys; more tender, more affectionate, more home-loving women and girls? It is for you boys and girls, who are growing up, to resolve that you will be all these things, and to be true to your resolutions.
The Glory of the Garden.
Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns
and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks
strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the
thin red wall,
You’ll find the tool and potting-sheds which
are the heart of all.
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-
pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and
‘prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout
to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift
the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens
are not made
By singing, “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting
in the shade,
While better/men than we go out and start
their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not
a head so thick,
There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet
a heart so sick,
But it can find some needful job that’s crying
to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and
work till further orders,
If it’s only netting strawberries or killing
slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your
hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work-is done
upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash
your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING
On August 4th 1914, following the German invasion of Belgium, Britain declared war on Germany. During the autumn, Kipling wrote six articles about the training of the new British troops that had volunteered to fight. These articles were published in the Daily Telegraph in December 1914. They were collected the following year in this 64-page booklet, published in the Britain and in the United States.
British troops training in Newcastle in 1914
CONTENTS
I
THE MEN AT WORK
II
IRON INTO STEEL
III
GUNS AND SUPPLY
IV
CANADIANS IN CAMP
V
INDIAN TROOPS
VI
TERRITORIAL BATTALIONS
THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING .
I
THE MEN AT WORK
The ore, the furnace and the hammer are all that is needed for a sword. - Native proverb.
THIS was a cantonment one had never seen before, and the grey-haired military policeman could give no help.
‘My experience’ he spoke detachedly, ‘is that you’ll find everything everywhere. Is it any particular corps you’re looking for?’
‘Not in the least,’ I said.
‘Then you’re all right. You can’t miss getting something.’ He pointed generally to the North Camp. It’s like floods in a town, isn’t it? ‘
He had hit the just word. All known marks in the place were submerged by troops. Parade- grounds to their utmost limits were crowded with them; rises and sky-lines were furred with them, and the length of the roads heaved and rippled like bicycle-chains with blocks of men on the move.
The voice of a sergeant in the torment reserved for sergeants at roll-call boomed across a bunker. He was calling over recruits to a specialist corps,
‘But I’ve called you once!’ he snapped at a man in leggings,
‘But I’m Clarke Two,’ was the virtuous reply.
‘Oh, you are, are you?’ He pencilled the correction with a scornful mouth, out of one corner of which he added, ‘“Sloppy” Clarke! You’re all Clarkes or Watsons to-day. You don’t know your own names. You don’t know what corps you’re in, (This was bitterly unjust, for they were squinting up at a biplane.) You don’t know anything.’
‘Mm!’ said the military policeman. ‘The more a man has in his head, the harder it is for him to manage his carcass at first. I’m glad I never was a sergeant. Listen to the instructors! Like rooks, ain’t it?’
There was a mile of sergeants and instructors, varied by company officers, all at work on the ready material under their hands. They grunted, barked, yapped, expostulated, and, in rare cases, purred, as the lines broke and formed and wheeled over the vast maidan. When companies numbered off one could hear the tone and accent of every walk in life, and maybe half the counties of England, from the deep-throated ‘Woon’ of the north to the sharp, half -whistled Devonshire ‘Tu.’ And as the instructors laboured, so did the men, with a passion to learn as passionately as they were taught.
