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.  The task of the Anglo-Indian administrator is, indeed, the finest opportunity for that heroic life to the celebration of which Mr Kipling has devoted so many of his tales.  This hero has a task which taxes all his ability, which promises little riches and little fame, and is known to be tolerably hopeless.  It offers to him a supreme test of his virtue—­a test in which the hero is accountable only to his personal will; whose best work is its own reward and comfort.

“Gentlemen come from England,” writes Mr Kipling in one of his Indian tales, “spend a few weeks in India, walk round this great sphinx of the Plains, and write books upon its ways and its work, denouncing or praising it as their ignorance prompts.  Consequently all the world knows how the Supreme Government conducts itself.  But no one, not even the Supreme Government, knows everything about the administration of the Empire.  Year by year England sends out fresh drafts for the first fighting-line, which is officially called the Indian Civil Service.  These die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried to death, or broken in health and hope, in order that the land may be protected from death and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually become capable of standing alone.  It will never stand alone; but the idea is a pretty one, and men are willing to die for it, and yearly the work of pushing and coaxing and scolding and petting the country into good living goes forward.  If an advance be made, all credit is given to the native, while the Englishmen stand back and wipe their foreheads.  If a failure occurs, the Englishmen step forward and accept the blame.”

This passage declares the heroic spirit of Mr Kipling’s Anglo-Indian tales; and many readers will fail to understand how exactly this spirit has been found vainglorious.

There is a passage in Shakespeare where a king’s envoy comes to claim of a high-mettled and sweating warrior the fruits of victory.  The warrior grudges less surrendering the fruits of victory to the king than he grudges surrendering his anger at being easily and prettily addressed on the field of battle by a polite and dainty fellow who has no idea how dearly the fruits of victory are purchased.  Mr Kipling’s heroes are frail enough to feel some of this very natural indignation when unbreathed politicians lecture them in the heat of their Indian day.  They come into touch with things simple and bitter.  India has searched out the value of many a Western shibboleth, destroyed many doctrines, principles, ideas and theories.  Phrases which look well in a peroration look foolish when there is immediate work to be done, and expediency begins to rule.  The first lesson which the Indian