regarded the mere question of race, Mr Grish Chunder Dé was more
English than the English, and yet possessed of that peculiar sympathy
and insight which the best among the best Service in the world could
only win to at the end of their service."


The principle was sound; but the consequences were such as usually
follow when ideas which are simple in one continent are applied in
another. Any man on the frontier could have told what would come of
asking the Khusru Kheyel to respect and obey Mr Grish Chunder Dé. It
was not a matter of religion or ability, but of history. The Khusru
Kheyel had had relations with the countrymen of their new Head for
generations and they were not relations of respect and obedience. How
there was riot and some rapid blood-letting on the border, and how the
new Head resigned his office before he had taken it over, is told as a
warning that there is a wrong kind of simplicity in dealing with India.
It is fatal to have invented simple and embracing phrases about a
country which holds more races than all Europe; has had a long and
private history of its own; has been more often conquered than Great
Britain; and has had every sort of experience except that of being
governed according to constitutional law.

This chapter being mainly devoted to rescuing Mr Kipling from his
political admirers and censors, it may be well to conclude upon his
vision of the devoted civilian Scott, the hero of a tale already
quoted, the man who fed the Indian babies from a herd of goats fattened
on the food which the starving people of the Deccan distrusted and
refused. Scott appears in that story at sunset, delectable and humane,
sneezing in the dust of a hundred little feet, "a god in a halo of gold
dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee ran