KIPLING ON THE SCOTS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 16, 19 January 1924, Page 11

KIPLING ON THE SCOTS

A SPEECH AT ST. ANDREAV'S.

Possibly it was the result of the mental upheaval following the Great War that in 1919 caused the students of St. Andrew's University to depart from precedent and elect a literary man, Sir James Barrie, as their rector. The experiment proved a brilliant success, and in the present year they chose Mr. Rudyard Kipling as their representative. Mr. Kipling has just been installed Lord Rector of the: University in the old grey city by the Northern Sea, and along with Mr. Baldwin (his cousin), Earl Haig, and other distinguished persons, has received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The occasion, as a matter of course, was made the excuse foj a students' carnival, and for one short week the plus fours of the golfers had to retire behind the red gowns of the undergraduates. : The gist of Mr. Kipling's rectorial address was cabled far and wide over the. globe, but one part of it was not thus broadcasted. Mr. Kipling took as his text Robert Burns's famous lines about "the^ glorious liberty of independent," and in developing his' theme he enumerated three "blessings" which he believed the average youth in the Scottish Universities to enjoy. , In the first place it was by reason of the self-denial exercised by their forbears that many of/ them were enabled to enter professions and callings in which they would be given free scope to realise their powers. Again, they inherited a strong sense of race-consciousness. In lively vein Mr. Kipling pictured modern Scots associating as their ancestors had done for predatory purposes which now take the form of ' 'raiding the world in all departments of life—and Governments." To their "gatherings" 'and "games" he attributed special significance as a kind of re-initiation into primal individualism. Scottish people are said to have a "quid conceit" of themselves, and, if that is so, it is because j they feel the potency of a tradition of personal responsibility and capacity. In the third place, they have been brought up, as Mr. Kipling said, to "do without things,"- to make a little go a long way, and to fend for themselves. Undoubtedly, this hard training confers special advantages in the battle of life,' if it has also sonic disadvantages in respect of its neglect of the finer social amenities. It turns out a type, in Mr. Kipling's opinion, "less given to muddle or mishandle moral, intellectual, and emotional issues than men whose wast-, age has never, been checked, or has been made good by others." ' . "-• J There is much truth in the estimate, even if the reference to a little oatmeal has no longer any literal application to the circumstances. While on the intellectual and practical side tbe upbringing of the average "lad o' pairts" is stimulating, it must be admitted that in the region of social manners and deportment it is apt to be defective. Scottish tra- | dition sets less, perhaps too little, store on that aspect of culture than on hard thinking and frugal living. There will bep no disposition to cavii at Kr. Kipling's statement that it is "hard to liberalise persons who have done their own weighing and measuring with broken teacups, by the light of tallow .candles," even if it be felt that the picture. partakes of caricature.