"IF."

Shannon News, 22 October 1929, Page 3

"IF."

SNOWDEN'S INSPIRATION. IN HAGUE CRISIS. (Sun Special.) LONDON, Wednesday. How Rudyard Kipling inspired the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Snowden) in his reparations fight at The Hague was related by Mrs Snowden in a speech at Norfolk. In the darkest hour, she said, when the gloom was so intense that it was difficult to .distinguish jfriends from foes, they sat on the sea-front, she writing on a piece of paper, he looking'out to sea, anxious and thoughtful. "I passed the paper to him," said Mrs Siiowden, "and he recognised the words at once. He nodded, and said 'Yes.' They were the first four and last four lines of Kipling's 'lf.' " The lines quoted are as follow: —• If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make "allowance for their doubting, too. If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth <of distance run, Yours is the Earth, and everything that's in it, - Aud, which is more, you'll be a Man, inv son!