THE ISLANDERS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7389, 15 February 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ISLANDERS.

RUDYARD KIPLING'S TRUMPET

CALL TO CONSCRIPTION.

Tiudyard Kipling's poem, "The Islanders," which occupies a column and a third in this morning's "Times," is a strong- plea for conscription, full of -scathing-, strenuous lines, scarifying the people who spend their time in becomling- experts in sport and declare that any form of compulsory service is impossible "V

among- a free people. ... c made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men," says the poet. "Then were the Judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed, At the hands of a little people, few

but apt in the field. Yet ye were saved by a remnant. . . Sons of the sheltered city — unmade,

unhandled, unmeet — Ye pushed them raw to the battle as 3 r e picked them raw from the street.

"But ye said 'Their valour shall show

them;'

But ye said 'The end is close;' And ye sent them comfits and pictureis to help them harry your foes, * And ye vaunted your fathomless power and ye flaunted your*^ iron pride Ere ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride! Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your *souls With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals." Then Rudyard Kipling impresses upon us the need that every man nmst be

"broke to the matter of war. Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the 'same; Each man born in the island entered at youth to the gameAs it were almost cricket, not to-be mastered in haste, But after trial and labour, by temperance, living chaste." And this is his answer to our protest:—

"But ye say: "It will mar our comfort.' Ye say 'It will minish our trade;' Do ye wait for the spattered shrapnel ere ye learn how a gun is laid 1 ? • • • • Will ye pitch isome white pavilion; and lustily even the odds With nets and hoops and mallets, ( with racquets and bats and

rods?" Then Rudyard puts the stinging question: — "Teraphs of sept and party and wisa wood-pavement gods — These shall come down to the battle and snatch you from under the rods, From the gusty flickering gun roll with viewless salvoes rent, And the pitted hail of the bullets that tell not whence they were sent." Finally he tells us, the people, "On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the savin? lies."