Evening Post. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1929. "IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD"

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 102, 26 October 1929, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1929. "IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD"

Some time last year an "Evening Post" representative was in the office of a man who was destined to become one of to-day's Ministers of the Crown. But at that time his destiny was by no means plain; in fact, it was rather confused.. However, the Minister-to-be was in fighting fettle, and quoted some verses from Rudyard Kipling's "If." . . . This week those verses figure again in the cablegrams, and in a new setting. The story is a side-light of the reparations fight at The Hague. Somewhere on the Dutch coast, during an interlude of the battle, a British Chancellor of the Exchequer is sitting, looking pensively seaward; beside him, his wife. He, a Labour politician and something of a pacifist, has probably never regarded Kipling as his Bible; nor has she. But she remembers something in the Kipling verse that hits the moment —the same "something" as had buoyed up the New Zealand Minister: If you can keep your head when all about you . Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting, too. If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty soconds' worth. of distance run, Yours is the' Earth and everything that's in it. And, which is more, you'll be a Man, my sonl Anyone who has heard the. British Radical Press—not merely the Labour Press^-rebuke Rudyard Kipling's "militarism and imperialism" will turn with much joy lo that splendid incident on the Dutch seafront, when a Labour soldier (ununiformed) and his wife fought for die Empire under the Kipling banner and with a united nation behind them. After many years, the breadth and depth and universality of Kipling's message have been declared in perhaps the least expected quarter: If you can wait and not bo tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in iies, Or being hated don't givo way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise. ... . There were weeks of waiting before Mr. Snowden won his way at The Hague. There were years of waiting before the poet gathered the fruits of the real democracy underlying the Barrack Room Ballads, and later poems of patriotism like "The Recessional." B.ut the harvest is none the less sure—"if you can keep your head." Head in this case including heart. Now take another glance at Kipling from an utterly different angle, forced on us this week by the Bishop of Manchester, who—about the same time as Mrs. Snowden revealed Kipling's share in the reparations fight at The Hague—was denouncing the crime of representing marriage as "an unceasing strife." There are, of course, more than one Kipling; and the Kipling of national unity is not necessarily a Kipling of domestic concord. In fact, it is doubtful whether, on sex life, Kipling is a serious authority; if not, one of his later essays will the better serve, by force of appositcness', to throw into "relief the Bishop's message. In "The Enemies to Each Other," Kipling pictures Adam as praying for an Eve. The Benefactor answers: "How knowest thou if the gratification of thy desire be a blessing or a curse?" " Says Adam: "By no means; but I will abide the chance." Introduced thus in a gambling spirit, Eve brings complications. When joy is highest, the pair are trapped by the bad angel and the peacock into admitting to each other the secret fear—"the fear which was in our hearts from the first, that the ;one of us might be made an enemy to the other." thus, through the channel of a faith-de-stroying fear, is introduced the idea of inevitable conflict—that theory of irreconcilability in sex antagonism, of "a fight to a finish," which the Bishop of Manchester denounces as a vicious psychology. In the Kipling story the idea becomes stereotyped as a divine decree attendant upon the disgrace of the Fall—"Get ye down, the one of you an enemy to the other." Follows domestic discord of the first pair, even as we know it to-day. But of course there are lulls: Whon the steeds of recrimination had ccasod to career across the plains of memory, and whon tho.drum of ovidenco was no longer beaten by the drumstick of malevolence, and tho bird of argument had taken refuge in tho rocks of silonce .. . then by tho operation of tho Mercy of Allah, tho sting was loosed in tho throat of our First Substitute, and tho oppression was lifted from his lungs, and ho laughed without cessation, and said, "Bv Allah 'I am no God, but tho mate of this most detestable Woman whom I love, and who is necessary to mo beyond all tho necessities." . . . And the sling was loosed in the Lady Eve's throat and she laughed aloud and merrily and said: "By Allah, I am nogod-

dess in any sort, but the mate of this mere Man whom, in spite of all, I love beyond and above my soul." So on a basis of mutual disillusion the first pair reconstruct their bittersweet partnership. Thus is it handed down. And now the Bishop of Manchester: "As a partner and sympathiser, and not as an old fogey, I want to point out that such sex-antagonism hinders the achievement of the greatest modern task." The greatest modern task, as he sees it, is not to' make marriage an un-ideal, negative necessity, but an uplifting, constructive happiness. Instead of upholding the artistic fiction of irreconcilability, "married persons should let the world see that marriage is the best partnership." Further: Wo must help the young to make happy marriages and prevent in the future the need for divorce. I ask women to\offer their best in married life, and to make marriage such a lovely thing that any sort of gloom ■will be dispelled. After all, the Bishop has little need to worry about what Kipling wrote in this ironic essay, "The Enemies to Each Other." More important than'what Kipling wrote about an imaginary Adam and Eve is what a real Eve did with a Kipling poem, when she and her Adam sat pensively looking seaward on the Dutch coast. Kipling will live longer by this association of his "If" verses with a great historic event requiring human resolution, than by any bit of unauthorised biography concerning our first father and mother. Eve may be permitted, to record her answer, and a sufficient answer, through Mrs. Snowden. "Necessary beyond all the necessities," Eve can weave not only necessitarian bonds, but links of gold also, and the modern Eve has not ceased to do so. She is still, to the mariner, compass and anchor; to the horseman, spur and bh; to the writer of satires and comedies, his undying theme. Than which,' what greater exaltation?