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proper reading is in the notes.
The sources and page references of Kipling's poems quoted by Orwell are from Rudyard Kipling's
Verse: Definitive Edition (1940; abbreviated to RKV). Dates of poems are provided where given in
RKV. Reference is also made to Kipling's posthumous autobiography, Something of Myself (1937),
and to Charles Carrington's Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work (1955; Penguin, 1970, to which
edition reference is made as "Carrington").
2. "Recessional," RKV, 328–29, was written after Queen Victoria's Jubilee and published
in The Times, July 17, 1897.
3. London and Philadelphia, 1891. The U.S. edition has a happy ending. Kipling
maintained in his preface that the English edition is "as it was originally conceived and written."
4. Although Singapore did not surrender until February 15,1942, most of Malaya had
already been overrun.
5. Strictly, a peddler, but in the context applied derogatively to those working in
commerce in India.
6. "Tommy," RKV, 398–99.
7. "The Islanders" (1902), RKV, 301–4; Orwell has "and" for "or" and "goal" for "goals."
8. RKV, 477–78, which has this note: "The more notoriously incompetent commanders
used to be sent to the town of Stellenbosch, which name presently became a verb." Kipling tells how
the General "got 'is decorations thick" and "The Staff 'ad D.S.O.'s till we was sick / An' the soldier
—'ad the work to do again!"
9. "'Follow Me 'Ome,'" RKV, 446–47.
10. "The Sergeant's Weddin'," RKV, 447–49.
11. From "For England's Sake" by W E. Henley (1849–1903), who has "you" for
Orwell's "thee." Kipling had "the greatest admiration for Henley's verse and prose" (Something of
Myself—SoM hereafter—82), and it was Henley who encouraged Kipling by publishing his verse in
The Scots Observer, beginning with "Danny Deever," February 22, 1890.
12. "Drums of the Fore and Aft" in Wee Willie Winkie (Centenary Edition, 1969, 331). It
occurs in a story that is a parallel to the poem "That Day" (see n. 15 below) and concerns an occasion
when, contrary to popular belief, British soldiers fled in terror. Kipling teases out why soldiers don't
follow "their officers into battle" and why they refuse to respond to orders from "those who had no
right to give them" (330). The context of these words, which may be significant, is: "Armed with
imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense
selfishness of the lower classes, and unsupported by any regimental associations..." It is not
surprising, argues Kipling, that such soldiers falter before a native attack if surrounded only by
similarly raw soldiers and if poorly and uncertainly led.