KIPLING MEMORIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 7, 10 January 1938, Page 12

KIPLING MEMORIAL

BURSARIES FOR BOYS

LIBRARY AT COLLEGE

INAUGURAL DINNER

The Kipling Memorial Fund to provide bursaries for 50 boys at the Imperial Service College now stands at more than £45,000. At the inaugural banquet of the fund over £10.010 was subscribed by nearly 1000 people representing all parts of the Empn-c and America. Lord Athlone presided and the guests of honour were Major-Gen-era) L. C. Dunsterville ("Stalky") and Mr G. C. Berasford ("McTurk"). It was a memorable evening.

A message was sent by the King declaring that he was glad, to know that the gathering were "united in planning a fitting memorial to Rudyard Kipling, whose genius is the common heritage of all who speak the English tongue." A remarkable »-'bute was paid to the genius of Rudyard Kipling by Mr. Winston Churchill, M.P. Mrs. Kipling, in a note of thanks for a message of "loving greetings" and a huge bunch of flowers, deeply appreciated the wish to commemorate her husband's work. Cables were received from Lord Linlithgow, president of the Indian committee of the fund; Lord Tweedsmuir, president of the Canadian committee; Lord Gowrie, president of the Australian committee; Sir Patrick Duncan, president of the South African committee; Lord Galway, president of the New Zealand committee; and a letter from Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, chairman of the American committee. Songs were sung by Mr. Peter Dawson. "KIPLING SCHOLARS." The boys for whom the fund will provide bursaries will be known as Kipling Scholars. The fund will also defray the cost of building and equipping a memorial library in the college grounds. The college, under its old name of the United Service College, was Kipling's old school. In his day it was at • Westward Ho. Devonshire, but it moved to Windsor 21 years ago. The final feature of the fund will be the provision of a memorial at Westward Ho.

By a happy thought, the guests at the dinner were grouped at tables representing one or other of the many radiations of Kipling's genius. There were Sussex and Devon tables to speak of his love for his own old school and his own dear soil, his immemorial England of "oak and ash and thorn"; a Merchant Service table to suggest the Seven Seas and the men who practised their lawful occasions upon them; an Indian table as a reminder both of his birth and his first flowering; even a little "Civil and Military Gazette" table to testify how. it began in the beloved vagabondage of journalism. The Army and Navy were also represented; there was a table for the aircraft industry whose cradlesongs he sang, and the Dominions were each separately grouped. At the New Zealand table the guests included Lord and Lady Bledisloe, Sir James Parr, Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Rolleston, and Lord and Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton.

"NEVER ANYONE LIKE HIM."

Mr. Churchill said: "There haye been in our own times greater poets and sages, more vehement and sentiment interpreters of pathos and passion, more fertile imaginations, and certainly more orthodox stylists than Rudyard Kipling. But in the glittering ranks which he took by right divine, there never has been anyone like him To read with faithful eye Kipling's Indian stories is to gain a truer knowledge of that great episode, the British contact with India, than will be found in many ponderous Blue Books or in much of the glib, smooth patter which is now in fashion.

"Even should the British Empire in India pass from life into history, the works of Rudyard Kipling will remain to prove that while we were there we did our best .for all. Although in my political actions I was often fiercely opposed to him, yet there never was a moment when I did not feel the surge of his appeal on the great verities of our race and state. For many years party politics estranged us, and it was only in the closing years of his life that we came together in resisting the recent Indian Constitution Act. "Two immortal poems 'or passages of English command admiration without distinction of party or mood. The Recessional hymn on the Diamond Jubilee and that rule of life contained m the verses entitled 'If should at one umei or another be learned by heart by every good Englishman." Mr/ -Churchill declared that everythmgthat Kipling wrote in his greatest days letf up to the' ordeal for which he felt we must morally and-physically prepare ourselves. BRITISH FREEDOM. "Then at last, suddenly it clattereddown upon us in rending and resounding detonation," he continued, "and he posed the supreme question which had governed his life: . . . ~ Who stands if freedom fall, Who died if England live? "Hard vindications were exacted from him. His only son, in the Irish Guards, fell on the field. "Much that has happened since the war filled him with sorrow. It may be—and we must all hope it so—that solutions or surrenders, which were to him abhorrent, may ultimately, in God's mercy, bring the. high causes which he served to a higher, to a surer, and a more indestructible fulfilment.

"But whatever may befall,. nothing can ever deprive him of the gratitude which Britons all over the world owe him for the inspiration of his prime, or of the homage which English-speak-ing peoples through long generations of delighted readers will render to the genius 'of his pen."

Lord Athlone, as president of the fund, replied. There had streamed into the room, he said, a long line of men and women, treading very different walks of life, but all inspired by the one set purpose of holding high the name and keeping green the memory of Rudyard Kipling.

Lord Greenwood proposed the toast of the guests.

THE KIPLING TORS

In reply, General Dunsterville said that in the series of tales called "Stalky and Co." there could be no doubt that the characters of Beetle, McTurk, and Stalky were based upon three actual individuals—Kipling, Beresford, and himself—but the events must not be regarded as history. They were for the most part pure fiction, and it was very embarrassing to have to undergo a cross-examination on any of the incidents so dramatically described.

He did not think it would be possible to select a more suitable form for that tribute to his memory than the triple proposal that was being put before the public. The arrangements made to purchase and maintain in perpetuity the Kipling Tors at Westward Ho while naturally of less importance than the main object, appealed to Beresford and himself on sentimental grounds. Neither suffered from undue sentimentality, but they would like to think that spot, rendered sacred to them by the memories of those happy days, of huts out of bounds in the thick furze bushes, had been saved for all time from the ruthless hand of the devastating builder.