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Show I EXTRACTS FROM RUDYARD KIPLING'S NEW POEM, "THE ISLANDERS." (From the London Times, January 4. Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed. At the hands' of a little people, few, but apt in the field. Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land's long-suffering Star). When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplings went to war, Sons of the sheltered city unmade, unhandled. unmeet Ye pushed them raw- to the battle as ye picked them raw from the street. And what did ye look they should compass? War-craft learned in a breath? Knowledge utffo occasion at the first far view of death? So! And ye frain your horses and the dogs ye feed and prize, 1 How are the beasts more worthy than the souls you sacrifice. sacri-fice. But ye said: "Their valor shall show them;" but ye said: "The end is close:" And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them harry your foes. And ye vaunted your fathomless power and ye flaunted your iron pride Ere ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride! Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls With the flanneled fools at the wicket or the muddled oafs at the goals. Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set Life so long untroubled that ye who inherit forget It was not made with the mountains; it is not one with the deep.. Men, riot gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep. But each man born in the island broke to the matter of War, But ye say: "It will mar our comfort." Ye say: "It will minish our trade." Do you wait for the spattered shrapnel ere ye learn how a gun is laid? For the low red glare to southward when the raided coast towns burn? (Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time to learn.) Will ye pitch some white pavilion; and lustily even the odds With nets and hoops and mallets, with racquets and bats - and rods? Will the rabbit war with your freemen the red deer horn them for hire? The kept cock-pheasant keep you? He is master of many a shire. Arid, aloof, incurious, unthinking, unthanking. gelt Will ,yd looje your schools to flout them till the browbeat ' columns melt? - - . Will ye pray them or teach them or print them or ballot them back from your shore? Will your workmen issue a mandate to bid them strike no more? |