s I fear I have sh writers is one ey have their a telling you that important. I am of E of th portrayers matter party rtly of techni over, they are d nvince in the e comes aware ot usually dull F o-that is what ly one of them r at how can we is not time. As ir whatever it better to get em. You need at fortress-or person who this hat, is better the the experiment. These writers do not know what they would like to achiev could. What they chiefly breed in one is ness. If this is the best that England for us in the way of fiction, we mu encourage our native product, or es tion and take to "serious" reading. T are too dull. The time is ripe, once believe, for a few big picaresque nove thing in the mode of the Satyricon, Blas, and Huckleberry Finn. For I think that people will put up fore being bored-especially as they are n us in the interests of virtue. To be sure-though it is some tim began this essay-I have still not rea Lawrence. [253] oria of concrete things were to be gath- d yet, I think, Chesterton or no Ches- gs were to be g abstraction; or resently to be pro 1 wrong. Co sterton or no gods. Rudyard Kipling, in his later life, fered under two great disadvantages sistence on a political point of view w unpopular, and the gradual diminishin flow of masterpieces. The dullest pe tell you smartly that he is "written c cleverest will tell you that he was pr but always cheap, if not vulgar. Perha one will fling "The Female of the Sp you. This paper is not to be a cata Kipling's virtues, nor yet of his achie But I should like you to consider wit a few moments that little volume The Five Nations. I take The Five purposely, for it is the Kipling of 1 Nations that I mean. Not the bette Kipling of the Barrack-Room Ballads Seven Seas. But supremely the Kiplin the way?-1 m Hown: Rudyard K ss. Right, becas gainst scoffers; originally expect tness from him sive or an exha utterances on pla tions. I have s with his "h treat him exhaus cult task; for th up, not of a fa finite number excuse for de have lived a long e of Kipling, an as reached wi of saturation to. Two things changed the Kipling knew: renewed residence in England, Boer War. Of course, he was alway perialist; he always loved Lord Rob en-by devious paths-he returned to our fault, and our very great fault-and now we ve forty million reasons for failure, but not a gle excuse! one has heard that rough-and-ready reviled—in the early nineteen-hundreds! now one recalls abusive editorials in Not a make ist. Bu and r you w pared only: can h ing a axion of G never alwa get jung! natid now s-he returned o listen to anyo make his little mock of Kipling as a ist. But if you will get out The Fir and read "The Islanders" throug you will curse those editors for fo paredness" is so familiar to us all only as a word but even as an idea can hardly believe intelligent people ing a man names fifteen years ago axioms. We are always thinking of Galileo are over. But they are never will be; the human race instind always has it in for Galileo. Kip get an audience for tales and ba jungle-books; but the moment he trie nationally, he could not get an audie now, they would rather read H. G. Do ye wait for the spattered shrapnel ere y a gun is laid? For the low red glare to southward when coast towns burn? (Light ye shall have on that lesson, but li learn.)" "Yes, thanks," came the sarcast from all the wise British millions; [257] |