KIPLING'S LATEST

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 24, 29 January 1927, Page 21

KIPLING'S LATEST

"Credits and Debits." By Eudyard Kipling. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. "How comes it that, at eventide, When level beams should show most truth, . ■ Man, failing, takes unfailing pride In memories of his frolic youth?" With Abu AH Jafir Bin Yakub-ul-■lsfahani as the fabled historian, anything is possible in the nomenclature attributed to persons in' Paradise in iiipling s pseudo-Eastern version of the happenings in the Garden of Eden which followed^ the eating of the forbidden fruit, Wit there is a deep wisdom in the philosophy '-'-which, in the stilted language, of the past, seeks'to elucidate the modern sex question. Eblis the Peacock, and the Mole combine to upset the deep contentment and fadeless youth of the first pair on earth by aanng them to the test of the impossible (that they should change in their contented love of each other) through, the eating of the forbidden inut, as the penalty of which they are driven out with the command,." Get T! iflown, the one of you the enemy of the other," which, in sex mattersseems to stand to tnis day. Yet-neither says the philosopher, would havo it otherwise. The contempt and hatred* of all "Neutrals" afloat shines forth in the, after-dinner conversation 0/ four ill-assorted pdace-time cronies whom sea •war:> service in the Channel has transposed in importance. "Sea Constables*' tells, in an atmosphere of popping corks ana pink candles, of the dogging of a specious "neutral" to ■ultimate ducomfiture, and the forfeit of his suspiciously destined cargo of petrol. Many of the stories have as their setting the Masonic Lodge of "Faith and Works," where, during the war period animated dialogues disclose tragedies, mysteries, and heroism, gleaned from the heterogeneous brethren who float gaily in from the four corners of the earth. .The ritual which .is the equivalent,' if not the: substitute, for their-religion,: draws together many strange companions, and amongst them are gathered the threads of, weird happenings, such as in the case of "The Madonna of'the trenches," a; psychic nightmare with a shining moral. • Public school chronicles, with the Janeites ana Stalky and Co.' brought to life again, are in the Kipling style. So, mi a way, is. "The Eye of Allah," in which the kindly, worldly-wise abbot of St. mod's, knowing that burning at the stake will be the portion of the rash monk who desires to make general the knowledge of the discovery of the first microscope, smashes it to powder, but there.are two short tales in this book not at all in the grandiose imaginative manners, yet perhaps the best examples of the thoroughness of Kipling's knowledge S>£ man and beast. "The Bull that Thought" is a Machavellian murderer amongst, beasts, which survives the bull-ring, after-slaughter-ing countless bungling assistants, by reacting to the desperate burlesque, of a toreador whose day is done, but whose knowledge; of the bull mind: is illimitable. Told in the Franklish hyperbole of its breeder,' this is a masterpiece m a. style none would associate with Kipling. "The Wish House," founded on the superstition that the wish breathed through the letter-box of a house unoccupied long enough to have attracted a "Token," will invariably be fulfilled, is a wonderfully wise study of the gossip of two old widows, seen in the light of reminiscenes. when each feels the end approaching. There are no more secrets between these old cronies, and the -weaknesses of human nature, as revealed in the soft Sussex dialect, are balanced by rare self-sacri-fice, by which one of them, through the "wish house," takes upon herself for many weary years the pains and retributions that should have fallen to the handsome rogue who, of all her men, she truly loved. Each of the stories is prefaced in verse, shadowing the theme.