THE NERVE THAT CONQUERS

Evening Star, Issue 20061, 29 December 1928, Page 7

THE NERVE THAT CONQUERS

WORK OF BRITISH SAILORS MR KIPLING'S TRIBUTE Mr Rudyard Kipling, at tho annual dinner of the Liverpool Shipbrokers’ Benevolent Society, held at Liverpool, spoke of tho moral uses of ships’ passengers and tho ,l world-end habit” which had been superimposed on the week-end habit, and of tho part played in tho national life by nerve, which he described as ” the cutting edge of imagination which enables us to overcome every handicap without too much clamour.” Nowhere had that nerve, he said, proved itself more splendidly than in the merchant service. Mr Kipling said ;

‘‘ When Lord Hewart was your guest last year, ho gave you some interesting facts about maritime law as that affected freights. But 1 don't recall that he mentioned a certain saying about that maritime by-product, passengers. So many of us guests are passengers, and so many of our bests are interested in our passages, that 1 need not apologise for quoting it. It runs: * God made fnon; God made women; and then He made passengers.’ This libel is based on tho cruel superstition that if you put people into a ship, and roll them round lishant, by the time they are decanted at their first port, they look and behave like nothing on tho face of the wafers except passengers. ;< I expect this accounts for the way we were treated within human memory. I won’t go into details further than to remind you that our cabins used to open directly into the dining saloon, and we were' warned by notices on the mahogany-inlaid mizzeu-mast which comes through the table that we were under the authority of the master, and that 1 the limit of his authority was the needs of the case, having regard to the security of the ship and those on bqard.’ This covered a large area. “ But now we have imposed the world-end habit on the week-end habit, the case is altered. So long as we passengers muster at boat-stations with our belts on, and do not try to alter the ship’s course or set her alight, we can do absolutely what we please. And we do. To take one side of our activities only. We arrive in 20,000 ton liners to assault lovely and innocent coast towns, a thousand of us under cover of a gas attack by 200 motor cars. Wo roar through the streets, a pillar of dust by day. We come hack at night, with our picture postcards, to dance to amplified gramophones on promenade decks till it is time to call the boarding parties away to carry the next place of interest on the programme.

“ And this traffic, this prodigious tourist traffic, is increasing. Time and distance only excite it to wilder effort; for there is a man at this table who expressed his regret to me the other day thafc he could not for the moment —for the moment, mark you—include the Galapagos Islands—where the giant tortoises come from—in a tourist itinerary. MORAL USE OF TRAVEL. “Well, even supposing we may be able next year, to cruise about scratching our initials on turtle-back sterns, what is the good of us? Apart from our dividend-earning capacity, what moral purpose do we subserve in the genera! scheme of things? This—-and it' is not a little matter. When wo are home again, and have arranged the snapshots of ourselves standing in front of the Pyramids or the Parthenon, we have, at the lowest, realised that there are other hinds than ours where people live their own lives in their own way and seem quite happy about it, and where we have seen’ and touched tilings we have hitherto only read about. And when interest in one’s neighbour, curiosity about his housekeeping and understanding of his surroundings are waked and can he gratified in hundreds of thousands of hearts, they make for tolerance, goodwill, and so peace And that is to the good. “ Much of this good the world owes to those big companies who foresail’ that, after the war, people would need a little fresh air and exercise, and supplied it. I do not accuse them of undiluted benevolence in this respect, hut organisations that have to visualise the full circuit of the globe, as a matter of daily ■ routine, are given—gloriously given—to building better than they know. The history of Liverpool since the Restoration is proof. The mere constructive imagination used to order and equip a port that serves every sea on every tide far outmarches what ;s known as ‘ imagination ’ in the imaginative callings. The demands on it arc more incalculable; the difficulties of execution greater; the penalties of failure more severe.

“ But these trifles do not affect us passengers. Wj reserve our imagination for our own jobs. Ail we demand of you is to ho taken everywhere ns punctually as by train ; as cheaply and as quickly as possible; in the greatest luxury, and, of course, in absolute safety. Nothing more. And that is why .some of you here have, like Shakes; pear a and Michael Angelo, to create masterpieces on approval every few years. But if your imagination be at fault as to her lines; if you have not imagined the best system _ for driving and fuelling her; if she fails to come up to speed and consumption standards., yon cannot throw her in the waste-paper basket. She is there —every foot and ton of her—a burden on her shareholders and a_ museum of useful warnings to your rivals in tho same game. And to come into such . game, before a card_ is drawn, costs, I believe, several millions. “Even after experience and science have been tried out to the last, it takes nerve to break away and back one’s own judgment against the wo rid. But nerve, is the cutting-edge of imagination, and it happens to ho a quality which, talcing one century with another, our country has not altogether lacked. Whether we developed it because we were forced to use the seas in order to live, or whether we had it from the first'and took tho seas on our way does not matter. Nerve, which knows risks and facer them, seems to be distributed vertically and uniformly, as far down as we have been able to mine into the grit of national character. “Nowhere has it proved itself more splendidly than in the merchant service. Here you have, in dailf use, the imagination that foresees, without being overwhelmed, any risk that the ocean may deliver; and the nerve that deals with every immediate peril arising out of that risk. These things are so wholly given and taken for granted that we accept, them as we accept the fact that our people depend for their food, their material, and their credit, on the merchant_ service. We know that if our shipping goes, we go, and that fact is perfectly understood by our ill-wishers. We have always accepted those risks as part of our existence. “Just now, our existence is so fantastically burdened and handicapped that, if "we chose to give rein to imagination, we could waste half our time and effort in forebodings. Fortunately we do not, ive cannot, so choose. For it was the sea that, from our beginnings, directed pur imaginings.. It \vas_

the sea that waited on us 'the world over, till our imaginings became realities, till our mud-creeks at homo grew, to he world-commanding ports, ana onr remotest landing-places the threshold of nations. It is the sea that has given uS the cutting-edge to oi;r_ imagination,the nerve that meets all manner of trouble, with tho inherited conviction that nothing really matters so long as one keeps one’s nerve and, in that certainty, overcomes every handicap without too much clamour.”