Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1135 page)

“Now why,” asked a shopkeeper, “does not our Government, or your Government, or both our Governments, send some of the British Army to Paris? I assure you we should make them welcome.”

“Perhaps,” I began, “you might make them too welcome.”

He laughed. “We should make them as welcome as our own army. They would enjoy themselves.” I had a vision of British officers, each with ninety days’ pay to his credit, and a damsel or two at home, shopping consumedly.

“And also,” said the shopkeeper, “the moral effect on Paris to see more of your troops would be very good.”

But I saw a quite English Provost-Marshal losing himself in chase of defaulters of the New Army who knew their Paris! Still, there is something to be said for the idea — to the extent of a virtuous brigade or so. At present, the English officer in Paris is a scarce bird, and he explains at once why he is and what he is doing there. He must have good reasons. I suggested teeth to an acquaintance. “No good,” he grumbled. “They’ve thought of that, too. Behind our lines is simply crawling with dentists now!”

A PEOPLE TRANSFIGURED

If one asked after the people that gave dinners and dances last year, where every one talked so brilliantly of such vital things, one got in return the addresses of hospitals. Those pleasant hostesses and maidens seemed to be in charge of departments or on duty in wards, or kitchens, or sculleries. Some of the hospitals were in Paris. (Their staffs might have one hour a day in which to see visitors.) Others were up the line, and liable to be shelled or bombed.

I recalled one Frenchwoman in particular, because she had once explained to me the necessities of civilized life. These included a masseuse, a manicurist, and a maid to look after the lapdogs. She is employed now, and has been for months past, on the disinfection and repair of soldiers’ clothes. There was no need to ask after the men one had known. Still, there was no sense of desolation. They had gone on; the others were getting ready.

All France works outward to the Front — precisely as an endless chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration. Leave the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of supplies. You will find no break, no pause, no apparent haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or her bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be used. It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training, and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance.

You know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom till then we conceived we knew, how the man’s nature sometimes changes past knowledge or belief. He who was altogether such an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to heights we thought unattainable. Though he is the very same comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things he has become great. So it is with France to-day. She has discovered the measure of her soul.

THE NEW WAR

One sees this not alone in the — it is more than contempt of death — in the godlike preoccupation of her people under arms which makes them put death out of the account, but in the equal passion and fervour with which her people throughout give themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks that may in any way serve their sword. I might tell you something that I saw of the cleaning out of certain latrines; of the education and antecedents of the cleaners; what they said in the matter and how perfectly the work was done. There was a little Rabelais in it, naturally, but the rest was pure devotion, rejoicing to be of use.

Similarly with stables, barricades, and barbed-wire work, the clearing and piling away of wrecked house-rubbish, the serving of meals till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but keeps its temper; and all the unlovely, monotonous details that go with war.

The women, as I have tried to show, work stride for stride with the men, with hearts as resolute and a spirit that has little mercy for short-comings. A woman takes her place wherever she can relieve a man — in the shop, at the posts, on the tramways, the hotels, and a thousand other businesses. She is inured to field-work, and half the harvest of France this year lies in her lap. One feels at every turn how her men trust her. She knows, for she shares everything with her world, what has befallen her sisters who are now in German hands, and her soul is the undying flame behind the men’s steel. Neither men nor women have any illusion as to miracles presently to be performed which shall “sweep out” or “drive back” the Boche. Since the Army is the Nation, they know much, though they are officially told little. They all recognize that the old-fashioned “victory” of the past is almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front-line trench. They all accept the new war, which means grinding down and wearing out the enemy by every means and plan and device that can be compassed. It is slow and expensive, but as deadly sure as the logic that leads them to make it their one work, their sole thought, their single preoccupation.

A NATION’S CONFIDENCE

The same logic saves them a vast amount of energy. They knew Germany in ‘70, when the world would not believe in their knowledge; they knew the German mind before the war; they know what she has done (they have photographs) during this war. They do not fall into spasms of horror and indignation over atrocities “that cannot be mentioned,” as the English papers say. They mention them in full and book them to the account. They do not discuss, nor consider, nor waste an emotion over anything that Germany says or boasts or argues or implies or intrigues after. They have the heart’s ease that comes from all being at work for their country; the knowledge that the burden of work is equally distributed among all; the certainty that the women are working side by side with the men; the assurance that when one man’s task is at the moment ended, another takes his place.

Out of these things is born their power of recuperation in their leisure; their reasoned calm while at work; and their superb confidence in their arms. Even if France of to-day stood alone against the world’s enemy, it would be almost inconceivable to imagine her defeat now; wholly so to imagine any surrender. The war will go on till the enemy is finished. The French do not know when that hour will come; they seldom speak of it; they do not amuse themselves with dreams of triumphs or terms. Their business is war, and they do their business.

THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET

This non-fiction booklet was written in 1916 and contains essays and poems that Kipling wrote about nautical subjects during World War I.

The original booklet publication

CONTENTS

The Auxiliaries

The Ships and the Men

Hunters and Fishers

‘A Common Sweeper’

A Block in the Traffic

The Night Patrol

SubmarinesI

Labour and Refreshment

Four Nightmares

Submarines

The Practice of the Art

The Man and the Work

Expert Opinions

Patrols

A Little Theory

Death and the Destroyer

The Admirable Commander

Wasted Material

The Nature of the Beast

‘Service as Requisite’

Racial Untruths

THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET

In Lowestoft a boat was laid,
Mark well what I do say!
And she was built for the herring trade.
But she has gone a-ro’vin’, a-rovin’, a-rovin’,
The Lord knows where!

They gave her Government coal to burn,
And a Q.F. gun at bow and stern,
And sent her out a-rovin’, etc.

Her shipper was mate of a bucko ship
Which always killed one man per trip,
So he is used to rovin’, etc.

Her mate was skipper of a chapel in Wales,
And so he fights in topper and tails,
Religi-ous tho’ rovin’, etc.

Her engineer is fifty-eight,
So he’s prepared to meet his fate,
Which ain’t unlikely rovin’, etc.

Her leading-stoker’s seventeen,
So he don’t know what the Judgments mean,
Unless he cops em rovin’, etc.

Her cook was chef in the Lost Dogs’ Home,
Mark well what I do say,
And I’m sorry for Fritz when they all come
A-rovin’, a-rovin’~ a-roarin’ and a-rovin’,
Round the North Sea rovin’,
The Lord knows where!

The Auxiliaries

The Navy is very old and very wise. Much of her wisdom is on record and available for reference; but more of it works in the unconscious blood of those who serve her. She has a thousand
years
of experience, and can find precedent or parallel for any situation that the force of the weather or the malice of the King’s enemies may bring about.

The main principles of sea-warfare hold good throughout all ages and,
so far as the Navy has been allowed to put out her strength,
these principles have been applied over all the seas of the world. For matters of detail the Navy, to whom all days are alike, has simply returned to the practice and resurrected the spirit of old days.

In the late French wars, a merchant sailing out of a Channel port might in a few hours find himself laid by the heels and under way for a French prison. His Majesty’s ships of the Line - and even the big frigates, took little part in policing the waters for him, unless he were in convoy. The sloops, cutters, gun-brigs, and local craft of all kinds were supposed to look after that, while the Line was busy elsewhere. So the merchants passed resolutions against the inadequate protection afforded to the trade, and the narrow seas were full of single - ship actions; mail-packets, West Country brigs, and fat East Indiamen fighting for their own hulls and cargo anything that the watchful French ports sent against them; the sloops and cutters bearing a hand if they happened to be within reach.

The Oldest Navy

It was a brutal age, ministered to by hard-fisted men, and we had put it a hundred decent years behind us when — it all comes back again! To-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than their ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the privateer; the Line, as in the old wars, is occupied, bombarding and blockading, elsewhere, but the sea-borne traffic must continue, and that is being looked after by the lineal descendants of the crews of the long extinct cutters and sloops and gun-brigs. The hour struck, and they reappeared, to the tune of fifty thousand odd men in more than two thousand ships, of which I have seen a few hundred. Words of command may have changed a little, the tools are certainly more complex, but the spirit of the new crews who come to the old job is utterly unchanged. It is the same fierce, hard-living, heavy-handed, very cunning service out of which the Navy as we know it to-day was born, It is called indifferently the Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet. It is chiefly composed of fishermen, but it takes in every one who may have maritime tastes — from retired admirals to the son of the sea-cook. It exists for the benefit of the traffic and the annoyance of the enemy. Its doings are recorded by flags stuck into charts; its casualties are buried in obscure corners of the newspapers. The Grand Fleet knows it slightly; the restless light cruisers who chaperon it from the background are more intimate; the destroyers working off unlighted coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in direct contact with it; the submarine alternately praises and — since one periscope is very like another — curses its activities; but the steady procession of traffic in home waters, liner and tramp, six every sixty minutes, blesses it altogether.