THE ISLANDERS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7401, 1 March 1902, Page 3

THE ISLANDERS.

EUDYAKD KIPLING'S TRUMPET CALL TO CONSCRIPTION. Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Islanders," which occupied a column and a third in last Saturdaj r 's "Times" is a strong. plea for conscription, full of scathing, strenuous lines, scarifying the people who spend their time la becoming experts in sport and declare that any form of compulsory service is impossible among a free people. . . "Ye 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 ye 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 pictures to help them hnrry 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 anu ride! Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls With flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals Then Riidyard Kipling impresses upon us the need that every man must be "broke to the matter of war."* "Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the same; Kach man born in the island entered at youth to the game — As 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 yo wait for the spattered sharpneJ ere ye learn how a gun is laid? Will ye pitch some white pavilion; ana lustily even the odds With nets and hoops and mailets, with racciuets and bats and rods?" Then Rudyard puts the stinging question:— "Teraphs of sept and party and wise I wood-pavement gods— I 'These' shall come down to the battle j and snatch you from under the rods? From the gusty flickering gun roll with viewless salvoes rent, And the pitted hail of the bullets thai tell not whence they were sent." Finally, he tells us, the people, "On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving 1 lies."