KIPLING AND THE SCOUTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19069, 15 January 1924, Page 4

KIPLING AND THE SCOUTS

“LAND AND SEA TALES.” A NEW VOLUME. THE AUITIOR’S SCHOOLDAYS, (From Ocb Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November 29. Those old young people whose lot it is to read Mr Rudyard Kipling’s latest collection of stories will do so with just as much pleasure as was theirs when they took up 1 a copy of one of tho author’s works twenty years ago. Moreover:, they will meet au old friend in “Stalky.” This particular story happens to bo tho first written concerning tiie questionable performance of “Stalky,” M‘Turk, and “Beetle,” .and' for some reason it was not included in the original book called “Stalky and Co.” It is difficult to boo why, for it is in every way up to tho mark of the original inimitable sketches of school life. “Land, and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guidos” (Macmillan, 4s) is a book written primarily, as its title implies, for Scouts and Guides, but its appeal will be much wider than among Baden-Powell’s army of boys. Each story has a moral —sometimes rather doubtful, it is true —and these may be generalised into tho Scout’s first commandment of “keep fit.” “There is one lesson at all Times and Places— One changeless Truth on all. things changing writ. For boys and girls, men, women, nations, races— Bo fit—be fit. And once again, be fit!” Kipling relates in his first story some of tho ways in which the Victoria Cross was won previous to the Great War. If there are some who were inclined to compare actions of bravery in past war unfavourably with the thousands of gallant actions that went unrewarded in the last war, they will reconsider their judgment. The author admits that in the last war thousands of men did things that merited the V.C., but in places where there were no observers. “And that is true: for the real spirit of tho army changes very little through tho years.” BURNING OF THE “SARAH SANDS.” Every child has Heard of tho wreck of the Birkenhead for it has been done into verse and story, but how many know of the burning of the “Sarah Sands” with tho 54th of the Line on board. As au example of long-drawn-out and undefendable courage and coolheadednoss this episode ranks as one of the finest in our history. It was in 1857, when tho Second Battalion of the Dorset Regiment was going out to India in this small four-masted, iron-built screw steamer of 1100 tons, that the vessel caught fire in tho Indian Ocean. The ship carries two magazines full of cartridges, and tho craven crew jumped into the long boat and kept well away. The clearing of the magazines, tho rescue of the regimental colours, the removal of the coal from the red-hot bunkers, and the fire fighting over a period of many days is an epic story of bravery and discipline on the part of tho troops which it would bo difficult to equal. Kipling tells the old story again in his tense fashion, but with the addition of some facts put into his possession not generally known. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Of the, dozen stories included in the volume there is not one to which it is possible to allocate a secondary place, but peculiar interest attaches to “An English School,” for it is a quite unusual and wholly harming piece of autobiography. Prefects were allowed to smoke in tho country outside the college—with tho double result that they did not smoke much and took scrupulous care to see that their juniors did not encroach on tho cherished privilege. “If anv head master,” says the. author, “is anxious to put down smoking nowadays, he might do worse than give this scheme a trial-’' ~ j “The school motto was; . hear God, Honour the King’; and so the men she made went out to Boerland and Zululand and India and Burma and Cyprus and Hongkong, and lived or died as gentlemen and omcers. Even the most notorious bully, for whom an awful was prophesied, wont to Canada and was mixed up in Riel s rebellion, and came out of it with a fascinating reputation of having led a forlorn nope and behaved like a hero.” THE LITERARY DAWN. The early development of the poet and writer is the most interesting part of the chapter. “There was one boy to whom every laxm quantity was an arbitrary mystery, and he wound up his crimes by suggesting that he could do ’better if Latin vers© rhymed as detent verse should;. He was given an afternoon’s reflection to purge himself of his contempt; and, feeling certain that he was in for something rather warm, he turned ‘Donee gratus eram’ into pure Devonshire dialect, rhymed, and showed it up aa ms contribution to the study of Horace. Ho was let off, and his master gave him the run of a big library, where he found as much verse as he wanted; but that ruined his Latin verses and made him write verses of his own. There ho found all the English poets from Chaucer to Matthew Arqold, and a book called ‘lmaginary Conversations,’ which ho did not understand, but it seemed to be a good thing to imitate. So h© imitated and was handed up to the-Hoad, who said that ho had better leran Russian under his own eye so that if ever ho were sent to Siberia lor lampooning the authorities he might be able to ask for things.” KIPLING’S FIRST JOURNALISM. Then the three boys who had moved up tho school, side by side for four years, started the notion of a paper as soon as they came to the dignity of a study of their own and. a door that w r ould lock. “The paper came out at odd times and seasons, but every time it came out there was sure to be trouble, because the editor was learning for the first time how sweet and good and profitable it is—and how nice it looks on the page—to'make fun of people i„ actual print. For instance, there was friction among the study-fags at once, and the editor wrote a descriptive account of the Lower School—the classes whence the fags were drawn—their manners and customs, their ways of cooking half-plucked snarrows ami imperfectly cleaned blackbirds at tho gas-jets on a rusty nib, and their fights over sloe-jam made in a gallipot. It was an absolutely truthful article but the Lower School knew nothing about truth, and would not even consider it as literature It is less safe to write a study of an entire class than to discuss individuals one bv one; but apart from tho fact that boys throw books and inkpots with a straighteye there is very little difference between the’behaviour of grown-up people and that of children.” , , , ~ , “When the study below the editorial study threw coal at the editorial legs and Sicked in the panels of tho door, because of personal paragraphs m tho last, number, the editorial staff-and there never was so loval ami hard-lighting a staff—fried fat bacon till there was half an inch of grease in the pan and let the greasy chunks down at the end of a siring to bob against and defile Iho lower study windows. When that lower study—and there never was a public so low and unsympathetic as that lower study—looked out to see what was frosting their window-panes, the editorial stall emptied the hot fat on their heads, and it stayed in their hair for days and days, wearing shiny to the very last. In this chapter, too, we have tho record of the author's first paid for and published verse. “Later still, money came into tho Syndicate honestly, for a London paper that did not know with whom it_ was dealing published and paid a whole guinea for some verses that one of the boys had written and sent up under a nom do plume, and the study caroused on chocolate and condensed milk and pilchards and Devonshire cream, and voted poetry a much sounder business than it looks.”