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Rudyard Kipling 1
Horizon, February 1942
It was a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he
prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even
speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who
have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a by-word for fifty years.
During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time
nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr.
Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shallow and familiar charge that
Kipling is a "Fascist," he falls into the opposite error of defending him where he is not defensible. It
is no use pretending that Kipling's view of life, as a whole, can be accepted or even forgiven by any
civilised person. It is no use claiming, for instance, that when Kipling describes a British soldier
beating a "nigger" with a cleaning rod in order to get money out of him, he is acting merely as a
reporter and does not necessarily approve what he describes. There is not the slightest sign anywhere
in Kipling's work that he disapproves of that kind of conduct—on the contrary, there is a definite
strain of sadism in him, over and above the brutality which a writer of that type has to have. Kipling
is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and æsthetically disgusting. It is better to start by
admitting that, and then to try to find out why it is that he survives while the refined people who have
sniggered at him seem to wear so badly.
And yet the "Fascist" charge has to be answered, because the first clue to any
understanding of Kipling, morally or politically, is the fact that he was not a Fascist. He was further
from being one than the most humane or the most "progressive" person is able to be nowadays. An
interesting instance of the way in which quotations are parroted to and fro without any attempt to look
up their context or discover their meaning is the line from "Recessional," "Lesser breeds without the
Law." 2 This line is always good for a snigger in pansy-left circles. It is assumed as a matter of course
that the "lesser breeds" are "natives," and a mental picture is called up of some pukka sahib in a pith
helmet kicking a coolie. In its context the sense of the line is almost the exact opposite of this. The
phrase "lesser breeds" refers almost certainly to the Germans, and especially the pan-German
writers, who are "without the Law" in the sense of being lawless, not in the sense of being powerless.
The whole poem, conventionally thought of as an orgy of boasting, is a denunciation of power
politics, British as well as German. Two stanzas are worth quoting (I am quoting this as politics, not
as poetry):
"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
"For heathen heart that puts her trust