KIPLING AWAKES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23933, 5 April 1941, Page 4 (Supplement)

KIPLING AWAKES

A FEW months ago, after St. Paul's had been bombed, Clemence Dane wrote a stirring poem in commemoration of Trafalgar Day (Oct. 21.) called "It is Dangerous to Wake the Dead." She tells how when waves of thunder and dust broke against Nelson's tomb, the spirit of Nelson awoke, "slipped easily out of the shroud," and made its way among the crowded streets, whispering courage and resolution, endurance and audacity: Nelson—in London —awake Ho stands in tho wreck of tho road. He sweeps up tho broken glass. He fights with fire and despair, ho feels with his finders your heart, Till it beats in your breast like a drum. This is the Nelson touch. And at last "they, for their name shall not live" find too late how dangerous it is to wake the dead. Rudyard Kipling's death five years ago was overshadowed by tho passing of the King, and though many tributes were paid to his genius, many literary jackals lifted their heads in the stillness to yelp at the dead lion. Branches of the Kipling Society scattered over the

Seven Sens from Vancouver to Melbourne, from Capetown to Auckland, did their loyal best to keep the master's teachings alive in British hearts, but for the nation as a whole, Kipling lay buried in the shadow of a temporary eclipse, sleeping his last in St. Paul's, England's greatest patriotic poet, not far from the quiet resting-places of her greatest sailor and her greatest soldier. Then came the war, and Kipling, like Nelson, awoke. Before a bomb had touched St. Paul's, Rudyard Kipling was alive again. His words, prophetic, ringing and unafraid, were on the lips of orators, statesmen, soldiers and civilians. Mr. Noel Coward defied the pink intelligentsia by quoting that bold reminder of the democratic ideal: At Runnymede, at Runnymcde Your rights were won at Runnymedel No free man shall be fined or bound,

By CECIL F. HULL

Or dispossessed of freehold ground, Except by lawful Judgment found, And passed upon him by his peers. Forget not, after all these years, The charter signed at Rnnnymede. From the evidence of his own words. Kipling was proved no brazen-tonguod .linguist, indiscriminately lauding his country, but a stern, wise counsellor who never feared to risk his ]>opularity bv saving hard things of the land he loved so well. So Mr. Coward reminded us of his terse comment on the Boer War: "We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good." Mr. Winston Churchill himself has quoted from that fine poem "For All we Have and Are" which, written at the beginning of the last war, is c\en more poignantly appropriate to-day. What could more aptly sum up and condemn the Nazi creed than: Once more wo hear tho word, That sickened earth of old: — "No law, except the Sword Unsheathed and uncontrolled."

Once more It knits mankind. Once more the nations go, To meet and break and bind, A crazed and drhen fort. Yet the.se words, miraculously apropos as they are, were after all written of another war against the arrogant Prussian spirit of world domination. A far more wonderful instance .of prophetic wisdom occurs in the Jungle Book, published years before 1014. The "bad man" of the jungle is Shere Khan, the tiger, and his ambition is to dominate the Pack. The others are cowed, hut Mowgli, unafraid, cries out. "Free People, does Shere Khan lead the Pack? What has n tiger to do with onr (leadership? . . Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle-butcher?" So the apparently unequal fight was joined, and when it was over "Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were coming for him already." After the fall of Bardia, members of tho Kipling Society in England cabled "Good Hunting!" to their famous fellow-member General Wavell. The General. in thanking them, declared that lie would not rest till he had stretched out the hide of Shere Khan upon the Council Rock. So the eclipse ha.s passed and Rudyard Kipling stands in the light, once more as prophet and patriot. Like Winston Churchill be trusts the British common man. He is not afraid to prophesy hard things, but like Churchill too he sees light at the end of the long road. England's on the anvil! Heavy nre the blows! But the work will bo a marvel when it's done.