“ ENGLAND.”

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1923, Page 4

“ ENGLAND.”

(Speech liy Riidvord Kipling, delivered al a Dinner of the Royal Society of St. George, London).

(Monday next will lie another St. Ocurgo's Day Anniversary, ami it will not lie unfitting to reprint this tribute' to our wonderful England) : Mv Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen.— 1 think this is tut occasion on which it behoves us all to walk rather cireumspectodly. If you let me, I will try and tell you w hy. About sixteen Hundred years ago. when [Lime was mis-tie.-s of the world and the I’iets and Scots lived on the other side ot the wall from Newcastle to Carlisle, ihe j story goes that Home allowed till those j people one night in the year in which th.-v could say aloud exactly what they thought of Home, without tear ol the eon-.Ciitteoccs : so then, on that one night , i i.hc year, they would creep out of the heather in droves and light their little unndc: ing lires and criticise the Li Lean Generals and their Human I'ollliliN and the La.-tern camp I'oilov.ers, who 1 1,0 Iced down on them from the top of the great high unbreakable Roman wall sixteen hundred years ago. To-day, Imperial Home is dead, fho wall is down and the Piets and Scots are on this »ido of it, but thanks to our Royal Society ot St George, there still remain one night in the year when the English can creep out ot their hiding places anil whisper to each other e.xuetlv vital we think about ourselves. Vo. it i- not quite sale to criticise our masters—-our masters who tax uv and minister so abundantly to what they instruct Us our wants out to he. since these masters of ours have not vet f|uit.e the old untroubled assurance nl power and knowledge that made Home SO tolerant in the days when the Piets and the Scots lived on the other side of the wall, we will coniine ourselves to our ow n popup i and widely ! recognised defects. | Some ol our severest eritn-s. who ol ! course, ate of our own household, have I said that there never was such a tiling j as the English race —that it is at best | the intolerably insolent outcome ol j ancient invasions and immigrations, freshened with more rove lit ('ontinelilal gaol deliveries. Ear he it from me to ! traverse such statements. I give them :on no less authority than that id the | late Daniel Dcloe, Liveryman oi the i city ol Loudon, author of "Robinson Crtisoe” and of a pamphlet called " The True-horn Englishman." He deals very faithfully with the English, so faithfully that in deference to the susceptibilities of some races, I will not give his version of the Englishman's pedigree. IniL in his summing up of the true-horn Englishman. Defoe sacs - : | "A true-born Englishman's a eontradiel toil, In speech, in irony, in fact a fiction, A metaphor intended to express A man al-.iu to all the I'niverse." In that last line it seems to me tint I Defoe slips into a blessing whore he

meant to cut sc. because a man ''a!• to all tiie I niverse' 1 cannot he who

lost, lie must have some points o contact with humanity, and the Eng lishmaii lots had several. The Phoenicians taught bint tin rudiments of shopkeeping; the Romantaught hint love of sport by hiring bin to tight wild beasts in their arenas I'lider the Heptarchy ho studied Soeia IL'Ooin. which in those unenlightened days i .msMed ol raising levies on capital 'll older lo buy oil" the Heathen rite Voii li Irom taking direct act ion He.,;o-i English industries, lie next tool .-. i'u i e-humli ed-years' course ol enll.-eitial and law Eivneli under i-lniii cut Norm.:n i-.n her.-: he did ltol learn Us' language (hen or sinee, but it I II hint with a pi'iloiutd icspccl. based on experience lor hi netgldioiirs aero - ibe ( baitiiel. and a r uitvii I ion whu h l into litis deepened, that . 1 ey wt it the only other people ,i bo wm Id tl el mattered. Per live hiiiidi'-d yar' Ids affair-, dome II" sod ioree. e. were milt roll:.. i by I'lemli, Italians. Sp,mi'll, with ,«•- easioual Att'trian. politico-e'-i-le-'aslier,! ttni h.orities, who tried to teach him that "rid- reaim of Englau:!" was but part of a vast international organisation destined to embrace, protect and in. struct all mankind, lie escaped from liaise embraces only to linil hitnscll subjected to the full rigors of the Puritan Conscience, which at that time vras largely hi reded by gentlemen from Geneva.. Leyden. Amsterdam and the low ('outlines. While thus engaged lie was, under met ext of union, finally and fatally subjugated by the Slot. A few yeais later he cm harked mi the

swelling tide of p-arly polities in all their attendant purify, .unco which he has seldom been allowed to look hack and never forward.

I. sill jin i t ill,it siK'li ;i nightmare of it; 11 iij11:11 o.xpenVnec would have driven an ulllllim■ rI race to the edge of liinaey, but ihe Englishman is like a built-up l-;i111 kari'el. all one temper though weld'd of many diil'ereiil materials, an I he has strong powers of resistance. I’;,man, D:nc, Xorman, Papist, Cnmiweilinn, Huiai-v, Hollander, Hanoverian, Upper Class, .Middle Class, Democracy, each in turn through a tlioiisand years experimented on him and tried to make him to their own liking. lie met them ea-It in turn with a large sdeni l.dei'ition, which oath in turn mistook for native stupidity, lie nave them eaeli in torn a fair trial and, when lie Intd finished with them, an equally fair dismissal. As an additional safeguard he devised for hiiiisclt a social system of watertight compartments, s 0 arranged that neither the water m popular emotion nor the tires ol private revenge eon Id sweep his ship ol State from end to end. if. in spite ol this, the domestic situation became too mu. It for him he could always take a ship and go to sea, and there 5;,,.j ; ~v impose the peace which tile Papal Legate, or .Mediaeval Trade Union, or proiltgate Chancellor of the* Kxchequer denied to him at home. And tints gentlemen, not in a fit of absence of mind, was the Umpire born. It was the outcome ol relaxation of persecuted specialist.-—men who one cause or another were tin,it lor the rough and tumble ol life tit home. They did ii fur change and rest, exactly as v.y used to take our summer holidays, and like ourselves they took their national habits with them. For example, they did not often gather together with harps and rebecks f 0 celebrate their national glories, or to hymn their national heroes. When they did not take them both for granted, they, like ourselves, generally denied the one and did their host to impeach the other. Hut. by some mysterious rule-of-thumb inagis, they did establish and maintain reasonable security and peace among simple folk in very many parts of the world, and that, too, without overmuch murder, robbery, oppression or torture. One secret of the success of the Eng-

lish was perhaps their imperturbable tolerance. A race that has been persecuted, or —what comes to the same thing—bored by every persecuted refugee to whom they have ever given an asylum, naturally learns to tolerate anything. Their immensely mixed origin. too, made the English in a very real sense akin to all the universe, and sympathetic in their dumb way with remote gods and strange people. Above ali, their long insular experience of imported brain storms had taught them that men should not try to do better than good for fear lest worse than bad might follow. And there has been enough of worse than bad in the world lor the lasi lew years. Our national

weakness for keeping to the easiest load to the latest possible minute sooner than inconvenience ourselves or our neighbours has been visited upon us in lull tide. After ninety-nine years nl peace the English were given ninetysix hours in which to choose whether they buy a little longer peace from the heathen in the North, as some of their ancestors had done, or whether they would make peace with them as our King Alfred made it with the Danes. It was it race that had almost forgotten how to say "No" to anybody who sstid "Vos’- in a sufficiently loud voice. It seemed as if it had unite forgotten that it had broken a Church, killed a King, closed a Protectorate, and exiled another King. sooner than he

driven where if did not want to go. But when its hour came, once again it was decided to go it' own way. and mu-,- again by instinct for it bad prepare,! notbing. it had foreseen untiling. It had been assured that not only was tliere no need for preparation against war. lint that the mere thought of preparation against war was absurd where it was not criminal. Therefore, through the li is t two year' ol the war. it was necessary to throw up a barricade of the dead bodies of the nation's youth behind which the most elementary preparations could he begun. There babe, oi no stub slaughter of the Knglisli in Knglisli history. but the actual war was in, more than a large-scale rope! i linn ol previous national experiences. It an El'gahethian Statesman or adventurer) could have returned to England during the war he would, 1 think, in a very short time have keen able Lo pick u]> hi~ office work almost where he had dropped it. His reports and himaps would have been a little more detailed, but lie would have been surprisingly abreast of the whole situation. Where the old Knglisli influence had struck deep all the world over he would have seen help and com fur f hurried up to all the fronts from all the world over without account or tale, without word or bond to limit or eomirm u Where the cold alien influences direct ed by the old were at V, oik. lie would have seen, as lie expel led, till help fol the war denied, withheld, or doled rail

I grudgingly, piecemeal ai a high price | He woiiid have recognised that who held line, in tiie days of the Arnold: |h. 'd firm at Armageddon, that wlia | had broken beneath Ids hand then wa | rotten in our hand now. liar a fei | minor dili’eietiees m equipment h | would have jll-t felt like any .-ado jor i-.ldier returning to some lullerh i familiar ioh of son-patrol or tioiu-h lie j between 'll and 'l 1 -. Like those met ihe would have taken for gianted ; ; great deal upon which other nation I might have wasted valuable though j and attention. Our studies ol Coioiie ' and Z-cln uggo, ol the English eimntr; l battalions not one year old that died t, j i l,e la-t man as a matter of roiilim | mi ill,- Irunt- that they were ordered ti j he'd, would have moved him no mor, i o" 1,--- than the little a Hair ot >u , L'-buid (> rent , I!'- oil 1' lo th> | " llou-nge." That lumper' oi CuttMx : Ni uuaiirv in Mesopotamia, picked al | Hies, at random, could -iugle-liaudoi iit ml eutifilii'. te in a few da;- ■ a ftp bn- ; lent Arab village, would have annc'.eu o| i’aiuima. , ■ ■ o'ii iifsi veoi iir--1 ris I 'rail, or ; ,rgolii. II cnpiaii- oi | Lite age. !!■■!:.; of tl:,- bu.d he | Would have known the breed ami would I have tab- II ihe Work m the breed lor And here, as | see it. lies tiie strength id the English -tlm! they have behind them- this continuity of immensely varied race-experience and race-memory, rnmiiug equally thiottgli all classes hack to the very dawn of our dawn, which iiupo.is ,ei them un- ( Usi iottsly. even while they d-.-tiy oi deride standard' ol aebievement and compa ; isoit. .hard perhaps, and perhaps a little unsympathetic, bui not low—nut low, and, as all the world is witness, not easily to he lowered. And that is the reason why in things nearest our hearts we praise so little and criticise so lavishly. It is the only i-oniplimeni an Englishman date pay lo his country. Ats you know, our standards of ip-idevemenf and ion,pari-on do not appear on the sui'fuee, nor are they much in men’s tmnitlts. When they are, they are mostly translated into terms of sport or the standard of our various games, hut whenever the English deal in earnest with each oilier or with the outside world, those standards arc taken for granted, and it is by Ihe tilings that we take for granted without word, that wo live. It was taken for granted during the war that every day wa-- St. George's Day, on one or other of our fronts. And now we and our kin, after these great years, tire s.’ek, dizzy and shaken—like all convalescents, a little inclined to pity ourselves. a little inclined to stav as lung

vs possible on a diet of invalid slop-, and a little more than inclined to mistake the hysteria of eonvaloseenee for the symptoms o! returning life and thought. Here also instinct tells us that the weight, the range, and the evenly spread richness of our national past should ballast a- sufficiently to navigate through whatever storms—or brainstorms there may be ahead. And we are llnealem-d with several. One school ol thought, -Muscovite in origin, holds, as the Danes held twelve hundred years ago, that rapine and scientific torture will elevate our ideals. I which up to the present have merely taught its to try to do our duty to our (bid and out neighbours. Others are content to work for the organised bankruptcy of whatsoever is of good repute, including the systematic betrayal of our friends very much on the same lines as .some people used to panic after every crusade and every visitation of the plague. We are further promised an unparalleled outbreak of education, guaranteed to produce a standardised State-aided mind. The church evolved almost a parallel system in the -Middle Ages, which, much to her surprise, produced the devolution. Lastly, lest we should ever again lapse into our "pathetic contentment," the breed which organised at a week’s notice to achieve the impossible and neieved it—by earth, sea and air achieved it—is now, its a reward, to be ruthlessly reorganised in every detail ol its life, walk and conduct. That great work was begun by William the Conqueror, Anno Domini 10b;!. and has been before Committee or Commission ever since. Xorman, Papist. Cromwellian. Stuart. Hollander, Hanoverian. Fpper Class, Middle Class, Democracy, have each in turn tried their fleeting hand on the “man akin to all the Universe." j From each in turn he has taken what he wanted, to each in turn he has given a fair trial and, when he has quite finished, an equally fair dismissal.

What will he do in the future ? We are too near to the dust of the mam

battle to see .clearly. We know that England is crippled by tbe loss and wastage of a whole generation, and that her position, from the civil point of view to-day, is the position of our armies in the darkest days of the war. That is to say, all leave is stopped for any man who can manage to stand up to his job, no matter how sick or stale he may feel himself to he, and there is undreamed-of promotion for untried men who, simply because they are not dead, will now have t.o face heavier responsibility, longer hours, and criticism that certainly will not grow milder as the years pass, but no miracle- have occurred. Thi' world of ours, w I licit some of us j m i licit zeal to do better than good have helped lo create, but which we must all inherit, is not a new world. | but the old world grown harder. The wheel has come full circle. Ihe whole weight of the -world at tiie present moment lies again as it used to lie in the time of our fathers, on the necks ol two nations, England and I'ranee, the ! sole force under God’s good providence that can meet this turn of our fate, is not temperament, not opportunism, nor any effort to do bolter than good, but character and again character, such more ingrained, eommonsense, hand-hammered loyal strength of character as one humbly dares to hope that tilt ecu hundred years of equality of experience have given us. If this hope be true —and because we know the breed in our hearts that it i- true—it this hope be mtistiited, | our children's children, looking hack ! through the luminous years to where I we here stumble and falter, will sav to themselves: ' Was it possible-—was M possible that the English of that ng ■ did not know, could not see, dared not even guess, in what height ol strength, visliom and enduring honor they had lift ed their land r" But we w ill lie circumspect! My i lords, ladies and gentlemen, for what j there is of it. for stteh as it i' and lor j what it may be worth, will you driiiK | to England and the English •'