KIPLING’S REBUKE TO UNITED STATES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18009, 20 November 1926, Page 9

KIPLING’S REBUKE TO UNITED STATES.

MAN WHO WON WAR PILLORIED IN POEM. MORE STALKY STORIES. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, September 18. A score of new poems, which appear for the first time, some new Stalky stories, certain stories of the war and post-Armistice period, and fragments of a verse drama make up the new Kipling volume, “ Debits and Credits,” published to-day. The poems have nearly all been inspired by the war, and one, “ The Vineyard,” written with a cold restraint, is hardly likely to be popular in America. To quote it in part:— At the eleventh hour he came, But hi.s wages were the same As ours who all day long had trod The wine-press of the Wrath of God. Since his hack had felt no load, Virtue still in him abode. So he swiftly made his own Those last spoils we had not won. We went home, delivered thence. Grudging him no recompense. Till he portioned praise or blame To our works before he came. Till he showed us for our good— Deaf to mirth and blind to scorn— How wo might have, best withstood Burdens that he had not borne! “ Late Came the God.” Another poem—“ Late Came the God”—shows us a vastly different Kipling from the youthful poet who once w'rote of woman as a rag and bone and hank of hair; and its theme is likely to cause as much discussion as the famous “Female of the Species”:

Late camo the Ood, having sent his forerunners who were not regarded— Late, but in wrath: Saying: "The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded On all that she hath." lie poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving. He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be fresh— Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh— Mornings of memory. noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her. Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached for her. So she lived while her body corruQted upon her. And she called on the Night for a Sign, and a Sign was allowed. And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision— Alone without hope of regard or reward but uncowed, Resolute, selfless, divine. These things she did in Love’s honour . . . What is a God beside Woman? Dust and derision. There is a note of wonderful tenderness and fantasy mingled with stark realism in “The Wish House,” the story of an elderly Sussex cook who had seen life in London. Famous Trio. The Stalky stories, although they introduce the famous three and, of course, King, have not, perhaps, the same careless rapture of the original book, but all Mr Kipling’s old skill has been with him in mastering the new Army technique of war, and there is one story of a heavy battery—“ The Janeites ” —which for sustained, rich humour is above the level of anything even Mr Kipling has written, and Humberstall, the gunner who in defiance of regulations wangles himself on to a draft to get back to his “ circus,” and Macklin, who teaches him mess waiting, are creations of sheer joy. Remembering these stories and also “ The Bull That Thought ” —another rare piece of humour—one is inclined to place “ Debits and Credits.” published in its author's sixty-first year, very high in the Kipling list.