THE MAN WHO WAS

Across the northern hills where the hairy Pathans played havoc with the Irish troopers, in the drawing rooms of effete Simla, and through the sweating jungles promising the lonely civilian a suicidal death, over all India even to the Gate of the Hundred Sorrows, the genius of young Kipling searched and brought to light the romance of the sordid. But now, they whisper, that genius has been dead for thirty years, and its newest effort, "Limits and Renewals", is only a sickly, grave-scented breath of the old Kipling.

All that is true. But the vanished Kipling is but the vanished empire, the current which vitalized Kipling was the imperial spirit of the Victorian age. A new race, which knows not the white man's burden, is at work. The White Hussars no longer drink to Queen and Empress in broken glass, and respect for the Sahib has ceased to awe the naygurs. Lalum, who was like unto Lilith, now imitates her western sisters as she sees them portrayed in the cinema.

But if the temper of the world has changed and left behind it the Victorian sensibilities which Kipling pleased, life as he painted it remains, and with it the appeal and pertinence of his wisdom. The compassion with which he tells how Gadsby Memsahib walked through the Valley of the Shadow, and the open-minded acceptance of the metem-psychosis of Charlie Mears, are good in a modern day of sceptical worldliness. Even the Prime Minister might get a better glimpse of the soul of Mother India through the enlightenment of Pagett, M.P. But that is another story.