Page 149 - DENG203_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_IV

Elective English—IV

Notes popular with the British people during the war with his major themes being glorifying the
British military as the place for heroic men to be, German atrocities against Belgian civilians
and the stories of women being brutalized by a horrific war unleashed by Germany, yet surviving
and triumphing in spite of their suffering.
Kipling was enraged by reports of the Rape of Belgium together with the sinking of
the RMS Lusitania in 1915, which he saw as a deeply inhumane act, which led him to see the war
as a crusade for civilization against barbarism. In a 1915 speech Kipling declared that “There
was no crime, no cruelty, no abomination that the mind of men can conceive of which the
German has not perpetrated, is not perpetrating, and will not perpetrate if he is allowed to go
on...Today, there are only two divisions in the world...human beings and Germans.” Alongside
his passionate Germanophobia, Kipling was privately deeply critical of how the war was fought
by the British Army as opposed to the war itself, which he ardently supported, complaining as
early as October 1914 that Germany should have been defeated by now, and something must be
wrong with the British Army. Kipling, who was shocked by the heavy losses that the BEF had
taken by the autumn of 1914 blamed the entire pre-war generation of British politicians, who he
argued had failed to learn the lessons of the Boer War and as a result, thousands of British
soldiers were now paying with their lives for their failure in the fields of France and Belgium.
Kipling had scorn for those men who shirked duty in the First World War. In “The New Army
in Training” (1915), Kipling concluded the piece by saying:
This much we can realise, even though we are so close to it, the old safe instinct saves us from
triumph and exultation. But what will be the position in years to come of the young man who
has deliberately elected to outcaste himself from this all-embracing brotherhood? What of his
family, and, above all, what of his descendants, when the books have been closed and the last
balance struck of sacrifice and sorrow in every hamlet, village, parish, suburb, city, shire, district,
province, and Dominion throughout the Empire?
Exultation and triumph was what Kipling had in mind as he actively encouraged his young son
to go to war. Kipling’s son John died in the First World War, at the Battle of Loos in September
1915, at age 18. John had initially wanted to join the Royal Navy, but having had his application
turned down after a failed medical examination due to poor eyesight, he opted to apply for
military service as an officer. But again, his eyesight was an issue during the medical examination.
In fact, he tried twice to enlist, but was rejected. His father had been lifelong friends with Lord
Roberts, commander-in-chief of the British Army, and colonel of the Irish Guards, and at Rudyard’s
request, John was accepted into the Irish Guards. He was sent to Loos two days into the battle in
a reinforcement contingent. He was last seen stumbling through the mud blindly, screaming in
agony after an exploding shell ripped his face apart. A body identified as his was not found until
1992, although that identification has been challenged.
After his son’s death, Kipling wrote, “If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our
fathers lied.” It is speculated that these words may reveal his feelings of guilt at his role in
getting John a commission in the Irish Guards. Other such as the English professor Tracey Bilsing
contend that the line is referring to Kipling’s disgust that British leaders failed to learn the
lessons of the Boer War, and were not prepared for the struggle with Germany in 1914 with the
“lie” of the “fathers” being that the British Army was prepared for any war before 1914 when it
was not. John’s death has been linked to Kipling’s 1916 poem “My Boy Jack”, notably in the
play My Boy Jack and its subsequent television adaptation, along with the documentary Rudyard
Kipling: A Remembrance Tale. However, the poem was originally published at the head of a
story about the Battle of Jutland and appears to refer to a death at sea; the ‘Jack’ referred to is
probably a generic ‘Jack Tar’. Kipling was said to help assuage his grief over the death of his son
through reading the novels of Jane Austen aloud to his wife and daughter.

144 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY