Journalists From England

"An' I learned about women from 'er."

"I've taken my fun where I've found it; I've rogued an' I've ranged in my time."

"And oft-times cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade, And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made; And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid."

"'Take your friend away. He has done with Hanuman, but Hanuman has not done with him.'"

"All gods have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people—the great gray apes of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend."

"East of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen."

"India, as everyone knows, is divided equally between jungle, tigers, cobras, cholera, and sepoys"

"She read a little of it. I give her review verbatim:—"Oh, your book? It's all about those how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it.""

"He did his best to interest the girl in himself—that is to say, his work—and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear interested in, what behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's Wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. Men have married on that sort of error before now."

"Everyone is more or less mad on one point."

"Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate."

"Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later on. Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will find that you do yourself harm."

"The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool!"

"It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight."

"For heathen heart that puts her trust in reeking tube and iron shard, all valiant dust that builds on dust and guarding calls not thee to guard for frantic boast and foolish word thy mercy on thy people lord!"

"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!"

"The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart; Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!"

"God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!"

"A scrimmage in a Border Station— A canter down some dark defile— Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail— The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride, Shot like a rabbit in a ride!"

"And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."

"The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth point goes; The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad."

"Call a truce, then, to our labours let us feast with friends and neighbours, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if “faint and forced the laughter,” and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past."

"A fool there was and he made his prayer (Even as you and I!) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair We called her the woman who did not care), But the fool he called her his lady fair (Even as you and I!)"

"I have written the tale of our life For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise—but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth."

"I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside And the lives ye led were mine."

"[W]e know nothing about their life which touches so intimately the White on the one hand and the Black on the other.... Wanted, therefore, a writer from among the Eurasians, who shall write so that men shall be pleased to read a story of Eurasian life; then outsiders will be interested in the People of India, and will admit that the race has possibilities."

"(From Sea to Sea vol. 2, p. 61): "Very many Americans have an offensive habit of referring to natives as `heathen.' Mahommedans and Hindus are heathen alike in their eyes.""

"[16 October 18951: it is my fortune to have been born and to a large extent brought up among those whom white men call `heathen'; and while I recognise the paramount duty of every white man to follow the teachings of his creed and conscience as `a debtor to do the whole law,' it seems to me cruel that white men, whose governments are armed with the most murderous weapons known to science, should amaze and confound their fellow creatures with a doctrine of salvation imperfectly understood by themselves and a code of ethics foreign to the climate and instincts of those races whose most cherished customs they outrage and whose gods they insult."

"[T]he proper way to handle 'em is not by looking on 'em `as excitable masses of barbarism' (I speak for the Punjab only) or the `down trodden millions of Ind groaning under the heel of an alien and unsympathetic despotism,' but as men with a language of their own which it is your business to understand; and proverbs which it is your business to quote (this is a land of proverbs) and byewords and allusions which it is your business to master; and feelings which it is your business to enter into and sympathise with."

"the immeasurable gulf that lies between the races in all things, you would see how it comes to pass that the Englishman is prone to despise the natives-(I must use that misleading term for brevity's sake)-and how, except in the matter of trade, to have little or nothing in common with him. ... Now this is a wholly wrong attitude of mind but it's one that a Briton who washes, and don't take bribes, and who thinks of other things besides intrigue and seduction most naturally falls into. When he does, goodbye to his chances of attempting to understand the people of the land."

"When you write `native, 'who do you mean? The Mahommedan who hates the Hindu; the Hindu who hates the Mahommedan; the Sikh who loathes both; or the semi-anglicised product of our Indian colleges who is hated and despised by Sikh, Hindu and Mahommedan."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

"The only serious enemy to the Empire, within or without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its proper comforts."

"It's a scientific-cum-sporting murder proposition with enough guns at last to account for the birds, and the Hun is having a very sickly time of it. He has the erroneous idea that he is being hurt, whereas he won't know what real pain means for a long time. I almost begin to hope that when we have done with him there will be very little Hun left."

"There are only two divisions in the world to-day — human beings and Germans. And the German knows it. Human beings have long ago sickened of him and everything connected with him, of all he does, says, thinks and believes."

"There is no middle way in this war. We do not doubt our ultimate victory any more than we doubt the justice of our cause.It is not conceivable that we should fail, for if we fail the lights of freedom go out over the whole world. They may glimmer for a little in the western hemisphere,but a Germany dominating half the world by sea and land will most certainly extinguish them in every quarter where they have hitherto shone upon mankind, so that even the traditions of freedom will pass out of remembrance. If we do our duty we shall not fail."

"Our Indian Empire must be treated to a few lines by itself. It is not a Colony but a ‘Dependency of the Crown’. The extension of our rule over the whole Indian peninsula was made possible, first by the exclusion of any other European power (when we had once beaten off the French there), and secondly by the fact that the weaker states and princes continually called in our help against the stronger. From our three starting-points of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, we have gradually swallowed the whole country; though some states keep their native princes, these are all sworn dependants of King George as ‘Emperor of India’, just as in feudal times a great feudal earl was a sworn subject of his King. Our rule has been infinitely to the good of all the three hundred millions of the different races who inhabit that richly peopled land."

"I've just read that I'm dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."

"From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than anyone has ever known it. Dickens knew its clothes and its comedy. Mr. Kipling knows its essence and its seriousness. He is our first authority on the second-rate, and has seen marvellous things through keyholes, and his backgrounds are real works of art."

"As one turns over the pages of his Plain Tales from the Hills, one feels as if one were seated under a palm-tree reading life by superb flashes of vulgarity. The bright colours of the bazaars dazzle one's eyes."

"Kipling... brought a sense of religious destiny back into a disorganized world. He was able, in fact, to render an immense service to his age, and it is no wonder that in his later years, when it became apparent that that age had passed forever,he refused to recognize the change, and raised a disgruntled pretense that nothing was happening save an outburst of misconduct on the part of the intellectuals and the lower classes. It is no wonder that he should want to do so, human nature being as frail as it is; but it is surprising that the writer of the masterpiece Kim should have found himself able to do so."

"...still more would I like to know about the brain history of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, whom also I have never met. He is to me the most incomprehensible of my contemporaries, with phases of real largeness and splendour and lapses to the quality of those mucky little sadists, Stalky and Co. ... He has an immense vogue in the British middle-class and upper-class home ; he is the patron saint of cadet corps masters, an inexhaustive fount of sham manly sentiment, and one of the most potent forces in the shrivelling of the British political imagination during the past third of a century."

"He [Kipling] is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man — and I am the other one. Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest."

"I still keep beside me a whole anthology of all his poems and all his books, and this is one that just typifies every single thing about what liberty means to, to we British, although it's about the English. And it all goes back to Runnymede, because the history of liberty in this country is the history, as the baron said to the king, you've got too much power, we want it more widely distributed. And the barons to the squires and members of parliament, and then we've distributed the property and rights more and more widely. And this is the history how it started at Runnymede, and it's called The Reeds of Runnymede."

"Kipling has done more than any other since Disraeli to show the world that the British race is sound at core and that rust or dry rot are strangers to it."

"Kipling is the only English writer of our time who has added phrases to the language."

"In the stupid early years of this century, the blimps, having at last discovered someone who could be called a poet and who was on their side, set Kipling on a pedestal, and some of his more sententious poems, such as ‘If’, were given almost biblical status. But it is doubtful whether the blimps have ever read him with attention, any more than they have read the Bible. Much of what he says they could not possibly approve. Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot."

"Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting. It is better to start by admitting that, and then to try to find out why it is that he survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly."

"Mr. Kipling's world is a barrack full of oaths and clatter of sabres ; but his language is copious, rich, sonorous. One is tempted to say that none since the Elizabethans has written so copiously. Others have written more beautifully, but no one that I can call to mind at this moment has written so copiously. Shelley and Wordsworth, Landor and Pater, wrote with part of the language; but who else, except Whitman, has written with the whole language since the Elizabethans?"

"The social attitudes of an author writing about animals always emerge with exceptional clarity. Kipling's stories are imperialistic, his mongoose belongs to the white man, it is the Englishman's servant. Only a European with a highly developed sense of his own responsibility toward life, with a cautious and aroused conscience, could write animal stories in the style of Pergaud. The weasel, the crow, and the magpie are his heroes. They serve no one, instead they introduce us to the basic tenors and joys of existence."