reactionary and hostile to the progress o the world, is to deny sense
and meaning to the greatest literature of the world. Mr Kipling's
instinctive simplifying of life he shares with the immortals. It is,
as we shall see, the immortal part of him. To write of Mr Kipling as
though he celebrates the ape and the tiger; extols the Philistine and
the brute; calls always for more chops--"bloody ones with gristle";
delights in the savagery of war, and ferociously despises all that
separates the Englishman of to-day from his painted ancestor--this is
the mistake of critics who cannot distinguish the cant of progress from
its reality.

We shall be driven more particularly to consider Mr Kipling's atavism
in discussing his tales of the British Army. For the present we are
dealing only with India and the "Imperialism" which some of Mr
Kipling's critics have taken for an offensive proof of his political
prejudice. Mr Kipling's treatment of the Anglo-Indian, and of the
dealing of the Anglo-Indian with the Indian Empire, has nothing to do
with the Yellows and the Blues. The real motive of Mr Kipling's
attitude towards the men on the frontier, in places where deadly things
are encountered and there is work to be done, is no more a matter of
politics, "progressive" or "reactionary," than is his celebration of
the Maltese Cat or of .007. "The White Man's Burden" is the burden of
every creature in whom there lives the pride of unrewarded labour, of
endurance and courage. In India this pride has to be wholesomely
tempered with humility; for India is old and vast and incomprehensible,
to be handled with care, to be approached as a country which, though it
shows an inscrutably smiling face to the modern world, has the power
suddenly to baffle its modern rulers by opening to them glimpses of an
intricate and unassailable life which cannot be ruffled by Orders in
Council or disturbed by the weak ploughing of teachers from the West.