The Writings in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Steven B. Jackson UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924057346789 RUDYARD KIPLING Volume XXXIV WAR WRITINGS AND POEMS THE WRITINGS IN PROSE AND VERSE OF RUDYARD KIPLING WAR WRITINGS AND POEMS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1937 .dV^'l' 4- CopysiSHT, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1933, bv RUDYARD KIPLING Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission oj Charles Scribner's Sons CONTENTS SEA WARFARE PAOZ THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET (1915) . i The Auxiliaries I 3 II . 10 Submarines I i8 II 28 Patrols I 39 II 48 TALES OF "THE TRADE" (1916) ... 59 "The Trade" 61 I. Some Work in the Baltic 63 II. Business in the Sea of Marmara .... 72 III. Ravages and Repairs 85 DESTROYERS AT JUTLAND (1916) . 97 I. Stories of the Battle: Cripple and Paralytic lOl vii CONTENTS PAOC 11. The Night Hunt: Ramming an Enemy Cruiser 112 III. The Meaning of "Joss" : A Young Officer's Letter 126 IV. The Minds of Men: How It Is Done . 140 The Neutral 151 FRANCE AT WAR France 155 I. On the Frontier of Civilization . 159 II. The Nation's Spirit and a New Inheritance 1 70 III. Battle Spectacle and a Review .... 180 IV. The Spirit of the People 191 V. Life in Trenches on the Mountain Side . 201 VI. The Common Task of a Great People . 212 THE NEW ARMY I. The Men at Work 225 II. Iron into Steel 233 III. Guns and Supply 240 IV. Canadians in Camp 255 V. Indian Troops 267 VI. Territorial Battalions 276 viii CONTENTS SOUVENIRS OF FRANCE PAGE I 289 II 315 THE EYES OF ASIA A RETIRED GENTLEMAN 339 THE FUMES OF THE HEART .... 355 THE PRIVATE ACCOUNT 369 A TROOPER OF HORSE 387 POEMS The Absent-Minded Beggar 407 TheBalladof theRedEarl, 1891 410 "Bobs," 1898 413 A Boy Scouts' Patrol Song, 19 13 416 Beast and Man in India 418 Chartres Windows, 1925 421 Cuckoo Song 422 The Exiles' Line, 1890 424 The Fires 427 Fox-Hiinting 429 ix 1 CONTENTS PAGB The Gipsy Trail 432 TheGodsof the Copybook Headings ( 1 919) . • 434 Great-Heart 437 The Heritage 439 "His Apologies," 1932 44 In the Matter of One Compass, 1892 444 The Jester 446 The King's Pilgrimage, 1922 447 TheLastof the Light Brigade, 1 89 1 45° London Stone, 1923 453 The Lowestoft Boat, 1914-1918 455 Mine Sweepers, 19 14-19 1 8 457 The North Sea Patrols, 1914-1918 458 Pan in Vermont, 1893 459 The Quest 462 The Scholars 463 A Song of the White Men, 1899 467 Supplication of the Black Aberdeen, 1928 . 468 The Vampire, 1897 470 SEA WARFARE THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET (1915) .f'- THE AUXILIARIES THE Navy is very old and very wise. Much of her wisdom is on record and available for ref- erence; but more of it works in the unconscious blood of those who serve her. She has a thousand years of experience, and can find precedent or par- allel for any situation that the force of the weather or the malice of the King's enemies may bring about. The main principles of sea-warfare hold good throughout all ages, and, so far as the Navy has been allowed to put out her strength, these prin- ciples have been applied over all the seas of the world. For matters of detail the Navy, to whom all days are alike, has simply returned to the prac- tice and resurrected the spirit of old days. In the late French wars, a merchant sailing oiit of a Channel port might in a few hours find himself laid by the heels and under way for a French prison. His Majesty's ships of the Line, and even the big frigates, took little part in policing the waters for him, unless he were in convoy. The sloops, cutters, gun-brigs, and local craft of all kinds were sup- posed to look after that, while the Line was busy elsewhere. So the merchants passed resolutions 3 SEA WARFARE against the inadequate protection afforded to the trade, and the narrow seas were full of single-ship actions; mail-packets, West Country brigs, and fat East Indiamen fighting, for their own hulls and cargo, anything that the watchful French ports sent against them; the sloops and cutters bearing a hand if they happened to be within reach. THE OLDEST NAVY It was a brutal age, ministered to by hard-fisted men, and we had put it a hundred decent years be- hind us when—it all comes back again! To-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchant- men, but they can go to the bottom by mine and tor- pedo even more quickly than their ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the privateer; the Line, as in the old wars, is oc- cupied, bombarding and blockading, elsewhere, but the sea-borne traffic must continue, and that is be- ing looked after by the lineal descendants of the crews of the long extinct cutters and sloops and gun-brigs. The hour struck, and they reappeared, to the tune of fifty thousand odd men in more than two thousand ships, of which I have seen a few hundred. Words of command may have changed a little, the tools are certainly more complex, but the spirit of the new crews who come to the old job is utterly unchanged. It is the same fierce, hard- living, heavy-handed, very cunning service out of 4 — THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET which the Navy as we know it to-day was born. It is called indifferently the Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet. It is chiefly composed of fishermen, but it takes in every one who may have maritime tastes from retired admirals to the sons of the sea-cook. It exists for the benefit of the traffic and the annoy- ance of the enemy. Its doings are recorded by flags stuck into charts; its casualties are buried in obscure corners of the newspapers. The Grand Fleet knows it slightly; the restless light cruisers who chaperon it from the background are more intimate; the de- stroyers working off unlighted coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in direct contact with it; the submarine alternately praises and since one periscope is very like another—curses its activities; but the steady procession of traffic in home waters, liner and tramp, six every sixty min- utes, blesses it altogether. Since this most Christian war includes laying mines in the fairways of traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by German sub- marines especially built for the work, or by neutral ships, all fairways must be swept continuously day and night. When a nest of mines is reported, traf- fic must be hung up or deviated till it is cleared out. When traffic comes up Channel it must be exam- ined for contraband and other things; and the ex- amining tugs lie out in a blaze of lights to remind ships of this. Months ago, when the war was young, 5 SEA WARFARE the tugs did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All this mine-searching and report- ing and sweeping, plus the direction and examina- ever- tion of the traffic, plus the laying of our own shifting mine-fields, is part of the Trawler Fleet's work, because the Navy-as-we-knew-it is busy else- where. And there is always the enemy submarine with a price on her head, whom the Trawler Fleet hunts and traps with zeal and joy. Add to this, that there are boats, fishing for real fish, to be pro- tected in their work at sea or chased off dangerous areas whither, because they are strictly forbidden to go, they naturally repair, and you will begin to get some idea of what the Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet does. THE SHIPS AND THE MEN Now, imagine the acreage of several dock-basins crammed, gunwale to gunwale, with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam-trawlers, tugs, harbour-boats, and yachts once clean and respect- able, now dirty and happy. Throw in fish-steam- ers, surprise-packets of unknown lines and inde- scribable junks, sampans, lorchas, catamarans, and General Service stink-pontoons filled with inde- scribable apparatus, manned by men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same clothes. The mustard-coloured jersey who is 6 THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET cleaning a six-pounder on a Hull boat clips his words between his teeth and would be happier in Gaelic. The whitish singlet and grey trousers held up by what is obviously his soldier brother's spare regimental belt is pure Lowestoft. The complete blue-serge-and-soot suit passing a wire down a hatch is Glasgow as far as you can hear him, which is a fair distance, because he wants something done to the other end of the wire, and the flat-faced boy who should be attending to it hails from the re- moter Hebrides, and is looking at a girl on the dock-edge. The bow-legged man in the ulster and greenworsted comforter is a warm Grimsby skip- per, worth several thousands.