January 6, iQiG. .LAND AND WATER. 
V THE CULT OF KIPLING. 
By the Editor. 
THE cult of Kipling grows. This was the almost 
inevitable result of the war and of the close 
union of the British Empire which has resulted 
from it. For thirty years and rhore he has 
been the Voice, bidding the younger nations make ready . 
for the last great fight of all. All that appertains to his 
writings has therefore gained a new interest in the eyes of 
thousands of his fellow-countrymen, and for this reason 
a hearty welcome is assured for Mr. Thurston Hopkins' 
literary ajiprcciation {Rudyard Kipling : A Literarv 
Appreciation by R. Thurston Hopkins. Simpkin, Marshall, 
Hamilton, Kent. los. 6d.) which has just been published. 
Anyone who turns to this volume in order to find per- 
sonal tittle-tattle about the celebrated author will be 
disappointed. Mr. Hopkins has confined himself almost 
entirely to his work, thus carrying out Kipling's own idea 
that the work is greater than the man, which he expresses 
in'his poem on Patrols, written only this winter : 
Sing welcome Fate's discourtesy 
Whereby it is made clear 
flow in all time of our distress 
As in our triumph too, 
The game is more than the player of the game, 
And the ship is more than the crew ! 
A thoughtful person on reading reviews and criti- 
cisms of the writings of famous men of letters, cannot fail 
to be struck at the implication which critics find reviewers 
frequently convey that a writer, once he takes pen in 
hand, ceases to be an honest workman, doing the best 
in his power without thought or care what his own or 
later generations may think about him, but at once 
becomes a poseur, who picks, chooses and selects merely 
to impress, and is ever prepared to " baulk the end half- 
won for an instant dole of praise." Dr. Stopford Brooke, 
than whom there could be no higher living authority, 
once told the writer that the deadliest sin which besets 
the man of letters is vanity, and that once the sin is yielded 
to, no little of the virtue goes out of the work. Sincerity 
is a balm that preserves from corruption, and we have 
only to glance round our own bookshelves' in order to 
understand the truth of the saying. 
The Deadly Sin. 
No living writer has been more careful to giiard himself 
against this deadly sin than Rudyard Kipliiig. The last 
of the "Just So Stories," contains a small incident, in 
the life of Suleiman-bin-Daoud who " very seldom showed 
off and when he did he was sorry for it." You may 
remember "he tried to feed all the animals in all the 
world in one day, but when the food was ready an Animal 
came out of the deep sea and ate it up in {three mouth- 
fuls." That is frcvquently the way with the reputation of 
writers (as well as children) who show off. " Suleiman- 
bin-Daoud fell flat on his face and said, ' O Animal ! I 
gave that dinner to show what a great and rich king I 
was, and not because I really wanted to be kind to the 
animals. Now I am ashamed, and it serves me right.' " 
Writers court the same fate who start out to show the 
world what great and clever men they are and not honestly 
to give of the best that is in them. 
' Rudyard Kipling, as Mr. Thurston Hopkins reminds 
us, began his career when in his later teens in an Anglo- 
I ndian newspaper office in Lahore. Being a good j ournalist 
. he did what lay in his power to make his newspaper 
interesting. Short stories and occasional verse are the 
oldest features of Anglo-Indian journalism. It is not 
always easy to fill the columns of an Indian daily paper 
with'news'; the profits of the business do not permit of 
any extravagant staff ; the work has to be done by two 
or three men and in the hot weather more often by one or 
two. But all the time there is passing through the 
country an ever-changing stream of specially selected 
British brains, men who for the most part would not be 
there if they had not proved themselves the superior of 
their fellows in the examination halls. They bring with 
them their women, who have to endure the tedium of the 
long long Indian day. ' Nothing can dull the intensity of 
the first imprdssions of the Orient; its keenness is only 
surpassed by the gnawing pangs of home-sickness afterthe 
glamour has worn off. 
Anglo-Indian Journalism. 
These clever folk are glad to use their pens for pleasure 
or rehcf. So it comes about that one of the niain duties 
of an Anglo-Indian editor is to read through piles of MS. 
describing either directly or under a thin disguise of fiction 
actual sensations and episodes. The liana ck-rooms of 
British regiments are not infrequent contributors. 
Kipling wrote short stories and verse because there was a 
demand for them. He put the best workmanship he 
could into the job, and his short stories survive and will 
survive for the same reason that the vamped historical 
plays of Shakespeare have outlasted all others of- liis 
.contemporaries, because each gave the best that was;in 
him to what at the moment appeared to be merely 
ephemeral work, and their best chanced to be touched by 
the authentic fire of genius. 
One of the commonest charges against this part of 
Kipling's work is that it showed up his fellow-exiles in ..a 
most unfavourable light. They who make and repeat 
this accusation which on the face of it seems just, are 
apparently ignorant of the Preface that appeared in the 
original paper volume Under the Deodars, which we 
notice has escaped Mr. Hopkins, who, as a rule, is a most 
careful collector of these sideli.ghts. This volume con- 
tained, among other stories, " At the Pit's Mouth,'' 
which opens, you may remember, with this sentence : 
" Once upon a time there was a Man and his Wife and a 
Tertium Quid." This is what Kipling himself said about 
his Simla stories, as they are now usually called : 
Strictly speaking, there should be no preface to 
this, because it deals with things that are not pretty 
and uglinesses that hurt.' But it may be as well to try 
to assure the ill-informed that India is not entirely 
inhabited by men and women playing tennis with tlie 
Seventh Commandment ; while it is a fact that very 
many of the lads in the land can be trusted to bear thenv 
selves as bravely on occasion as did my friend the late 
Robert Hanna Wick. The drawback of collecting dirt 
in one corner is that it gives a false notion of the filth 
of the room. Folk who understand and have knowledge 
of their own will be able to strike fair averages. The 
opinions of people who do not understand cire somewhit 
less valuable. 
Charge of Brutality. 
" Brutal " is a favourite epithet of abuse that stav[- 
at-home critics fling at him. It is one which Mr. Hopkiri|s 
carefully examines. As a matter of fact Kipling is never 
one half as brutal as the life to which he has held a mirror 
up. All his short stories (or practically all) are based 
on actual incidents ; not a few are merely reports of events, 
and not one, so far as the writer is aware, is morel horrible 
or painful than actual occurrences in India. Here is an 
example which fell within the writer's own experience. 
An Englishman in an out-of-the-way station was bitten 
one morning by his favourite dog. The dog developed 
hydrophobia and was shot. It was before the days of 
Pasteurism. A few evenings later the man was dihing 
with friends. He was seized by the madness ; his 
paroxysms were awful; all his friends could do was to 
shut him in an empty room and fling to him handkerchiefs 
soaked in chloroforrii ; he died before sunrise. Had that 
occurrence been described by Kipling, doubtless afore- 
times it would have been deemed further irrefutable 
evidence of his " brutality " by cream-faced critics to 
whom " seeing life " implied making beasts of themselves 
in the dark hours of the night amid the vicious haunts 
of Western cities knowing that their bodies were safe- 
guarded by the police and the common hangman. 
I say purposely " aforetimes " for sorrowful evidence 
accumulates that a new value is being affixed to the word 
" brutal " in these months of grief and suffering. All are 
being taught that Death is no longer the discreet visitor 
he was thought to be, who when he knocked at door of 
cottage or palace was introduced by a polite physit'ian, 
and left behind him a smooth- voiced family lawyer and 
