SPIRIT OF ENGLAND

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 5

SPIRIT OF ENGLAND

ITS POST-WAfi TRIALS

A KIPLING ADDRESS

Mr. Rudyard Kipling was the principal speaker at the annual dinner of the Royal Society of St. George, in London recently. Proposing "England and the English," Mr. Kipling said that Great Britain's quota of dead in the war was over 800,000 when the books were closed in 1921 or 1922, and it would be within the mark to say that 751X000 of these were English, reports "The Times." Furthermore, a large, but unknown, number died in the. next few years from wounds or disease directly due to the war. There was a third category of men incapacitated from effort by the . effects of • shock, : gassing, tubercle, and the like. These carried a high death-rate, because many of them burned out half a life's vitality in three or four years. They, too, had ceased to count. All these were men of average physique, and, but that they died without issue, would have continued the race. The selective elimination of so many men of one type, and their replacement by so many persons of another type-and their children, led to an extensive revision of all standards of English thought and action. There were a number of persons, who, for various motives, had dissociated themselves from the war at the outset. These, however, were all able to answer to their names at the close of the hostilities, and to rejoin the national life with a clear field before them. Still they were not happy. There was a necessity laid upon man to justify himself to himself in order that he might continue to live comfortably with himself. ' Initial errors, as they all knew, were trivial. It was what men said and did to prove to themselves that their errors were really laborious , virtues which built up the whole-time hells of this •life. So it was in exact accord with human nature that, very shortly after the war, a theory should have sprung up that the war had been due to a sort of cosmic hallucination which had infected the nations concerned with a sort of cosmic hysteria. This theory absolved those who had not interested themselves In the war, and, by inference, condemned those who had; thus supplying comfort and moral support where needed. . Naturally, the notion bore fruit. A little later the electorate was enlarged by the enfranchisement of all English women over twenty-one. This gave renewed impetus to the national ideal of an ever-rising standard of living, and the removal of want, discomfort, and the accidents of life from the lives of all their people. To' this end they built up, and were now building, gigantic organisations to control and handle every detail of those lives. But they chose not to provide that reasonable margin of external safety without which even the lowest standard of life could not be maintained in this dangerously-congested island. The world outside England had other preoccupations. Like themselves, it had been compelled ti deal with an opponent whose national life and ideals were based on a cult —a religion, as it now appeared—of war, which exacted that all his nationals should be trained, at any cost, to endure as well as to inflict punishment. In this the opponent was excusable. He had won his place in civilisation by means of three well-planned .wars waged within two generations. He had been checked somewhat in his fourth war, but soon after the close of it—in 1924 or 1925— seemed to.be preparing for a fifth campaign. > . In this, also, the opponent was excusable. His path was made easy for him. Stride for stride with his progress towards his avowed goal they toiled, as men toiled after virtue, to cast away a half, and more than a half, of their defences in all three elements, and to limit the soures of their supply and renewal. This they did explicitly that they might set the rest of the world a good example. That the rest of the world—down to little uneasy neutrals who had seen what could happen to a neutral at a pinch—was openly or furtively trying to arm itself against whispered eventualities had nothing to do with their case. It was laid upon England to set the world an example, no matter at what risks. - For several years responsible administrators dwelt almost with complacency on the magnitude of the risks they were running, and on our righteousness in running them; and through all those years their people were made to appear as if they loved to have it so. But through all those irrecoverable years a large part of the world outside England had not been idle. Today State-controlled murder and torture, open and secret, within and outside the borders of a State; State-engin-eered famine, starvation, and slavery were requisite; State-imposed goldlessness or State-prescribed paganism were commonplaces of domestic administration throughout States whose aggregate area was between one-fifth and one-fourth of the total land surface of the eastern hemisphere. These modern developments had been accepted in England without noticeable protest, even from quarters usually quick to protest. Nevertheless, the past year or so had given birth to the idea that our example of. Statedefended defencelessness had not borne much fruit, and that we had walked far enough along the road which was paved with good intentions. It was now arranged that in due time we would take steps to remedy our more obvious deficiencies. So far, good; but if that time were not given-if the attack of the future was to be on the same swift all-in lines as their opponents' domestic ad-ministrations-it was possible, that,before they were aware, their country might have joined those submerged races of history who passed their^ children through fire to Moloch in order to win credit with their gods. And yet, the genius of their race fought for them in the teeth of doctrine! Vnßlish The' abiding springs of the English spirit were not of yesterday or the day before. They drew from the immemorial continuity of the nations life under its own sovereigns. They were fed by a human relationship, more intimate and more far-reaching than any the world had even known. •They made part of a mystery as unpurchaseable as it was cable. One had but to look back over the last century of their past to realise how that Royal relationship set itself, through mother, son; and grandson, to consolidate and prepare for the future, and to meet the hazards of the present. Three generations of the «ulpg House had accepted whatever burden of responsibility, whatever merciless demand for effort, whatever of personal risk, the honour or the needs of their people laid upon them. Each generatK to turn, had bowed the neck to unbroken sacrifice, devotion and patience. These things were assuredFy not exhibited for the sake of example only. They had come by cumulative weight of virtue and toil, to crelte to stiffen, and to inspire the whole taken-for-granted fabric of santty and silent discharge of duty, both in the island and throughout the Empire on which their destiny depended That,-behind and beyond all, was their strength and hope. It was in that hope that he asked them to drink to-Eng-ljjnd and the English. __