POETRY VERSUS FACT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 290, 20 September 1915, Page 3

POETRY VERSUS FACT.

And always the big quote from , something of Kipling’s a line or ! Ovo fi’om th e “Ballad of the Clampheri down for preference. If the recent sea fighting has proved anything', it is that Kip” didn’t know a modern sea scrap from a floating beehive. ( Ko writer of naval affars ever put on. record or predeted the few tfimppQ truths which caused the undoing of Admiral Craddock in the famous Falklands fight. Although out gunned, his chances were good if he jhad not permitted the light of silhouette his ships against the skyline. Craddock tried the Kipling stunt of closing with, the enemy and allowing the good old bulldog boys to get to grips. We know what happened. In Kjpling’s “Ballad of the Clampherdown.” the poor misguided enemy allows the British skipper ot drift alongside and grapple With his irons, so that the Clampher can spew up five hundred men on to the other’s decks “as in the days of old—and as it still shall be! Wow, wow!’* And only a short year ago Kipling was regarded as an authority on naval gunnery! 1914 was the death of many reputations, military and literary.