256 ENGLISH SAGA

genius born in Bombay "between the palms and the sea" and bred
half in India, half in England, painted the life of the Ariglo-
Indian community for his countrymen: the colour, scent and sound
of the East, the crowded bazaar opening for the sahib's horse,
the contrast with the grey, suburban, northern island from
which the characters of his witty, glittering, malicious stories
hailed. Since the day when Lord Craven drew his interminable
cocoa trees for Harriette Wilson, the English had been bored
by tales of their own Empire. And here was a young journalist,
still in his early twenties, who could cause a run on them in
every circulating library in London.

But Rudyard Kipling did more than tell stories. He told his
readers to think imperially. His message was not of opportunity
but of duty and destiny. From its hallowed centre at Westmins-
ter—* where the Abbey makes us we"—to the fringed palm and
the snow-capped fort at the outer circumference, the Empire was
a vast trust for humanity. "The white man's burden" constituted
the peculiar contribution to human progress of the Anglo-Saxon
race. Despite its strident energy, Kipling's work was as moral
in its purpose as Milton's or Bunyan's.1 Its aim was to remind
Englishmen of their duty, by relating the vigour, courage and
pathos of those who dedicated undemonstrative lives to a great
ruling tradition. aAs to my notions of imperialism, I learned
them from men who mostly cursed their work, but always
carried- it through to the end, under difficult surroundings,
without help or acknowledgment."

With Kipling as with all the great English moralists, duty
was no mere negative virtue—a prudent, middle-class insurance
against Hell. It was a mighty force, giving life, poetry and fire
as it did to the Hebrew poets of old. His vision of the English
was of a race finding its destiny in free surrender, self-training
and self-dedication to a divine purpose. In his hymn of the old
Scots engineer M'Andrew, published in 1896, he epitomised it as:

"Law, Order, Duty and Restraint, Obedience, Discipline."
• •• • • •••

But the man who above all others turned the thoughts of

XA French critic realised this more clearly than Kipling's own countrymen.
^Kipling, of all tie great living -writers of his country, stands alone for the absolute
in ethics, with a militant faith. A Wells, a Shaw, a Bennett, a Galsworthy, serve other
gods, the gods of reason or sentiment. Kipling's work appeals to our will . . .; he
u the teacher of conduct.*—Andn Chevrilbm, fkne Studies in English Literature^ 6*7.