KIPLING CONDEMNS CRICKET AND FOOTBALL. Wants the Conscription Instead.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 80, 11 January 1902, Page 8

KIPLING CONDEMNS CRICKET AND FOOTBALL. Wants the Conscription Instead.

RUDYxVRD KIPLING is a \ery great man indeed He is the fashion at present and no one knows why his vivid poetic iiie is not in use instead of the pallid flame of the present Poet Laureate It is a newthing however, for a poet, however naming, to exhort the nation m rhyme as to its duties According to the cable man Rudyard thinks that it is the duty of the nation to accept military conscription A call for \olunteer yeomen that is answered by applications enormously exceeding requnements is not sufficient for the poet advisei He must have the conscription • • • Of course, he is himself over the age at which any army in Europe accepts recruits, and passionate poems are easier to butter bread with than a cleai sevenpence a day The Anglo-Indian is afiaid that old Brittain and the young Britains beyond the seas still throw themselves with too much &oul into football and cricket, that they do not care a dump foi mothei country — that, in fact, they attach too much imports ance to the national pastime and too little to national quarrels * » » Curious to notice that thousands of the finest exponents of the games mentioned rushed foi the South African scrum as soon after the kickoff as possible Cunous, also, that a footballing nation, a nation that is &d proud of its physical reputation, will not give up that which has made it, accept conscuption, let its muscles go to wreck and ruin, and please Mr Kipling ' We are not a poet, and we have not taken out a poetical license which will give us the light to prophesy but we have borrowed a local license for the purpose of prophesying the continuance of the national spoits, and the death of any Conscription Bill that comes before the Parliament of Great Britain If this were a Kipling opinion, it would be worth about a lac of rupees, but, as it is not it is given away absolutely free The bold poet steps forth to tell the country in ex-

pensive veise that the British aie fawning on their little colonial sistei s and brothers for men who can shoot. 01 ride For the few thousands of colonial shooters and riders in Africa, there are thousands of young fellows in Great Britain who would willingly fill their places The gentle Boei will lead Rudyard s new poem, and the line that asks Britons to face the necessities of Impel lalism will be construed into sheei funk by Ins foreign readers Nothing is moie certain His exhoitation to conscription will be used as evidence that nearly all the British soldieis m Africa are killed, and that the only thing left is to force citizens to go out a^ food for Dutch powdci • • ♦ Consciiption toi a nation that does not play cricket or football, and which is physically weak is r bsolutely necessary m order to procure soldleis at the point of the bayonet But foi a nation whose men are. by very reason of their striving to excel in sport anxious to excel in the game of war, conscription robs patriotism of its fervour It also makes war a trade and tends to degrade the citizen by converting him into a kind of military marionette