Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1255 page)

For instance, I belonged then to a Service where the unwritten law was that if you gave a man twice as much work to do in a day as he could do, he would do it; but if you only gave him as much as he could do, he wouldn’t do half of it. This in itself made me sympathise with the tradition of other Services who have the same unwritten law, and with the spirit which underlies every service on land and sea — specially on the Sea.

But as you yourselves know well, Gentlemen, the spirit of the Navy is too old, too varied, and too subtle, to be adequately interpreted by any outsider, no matter how keen his interest, or how deep his affection. He may paint a more or less truthful picture of externals; he may utter faithfully all that has been given him to say, but the essential soul of the machine — the spirit that makes the Service — will, and must, always elude him. How can it well be otherwise? The life out of which this spirit is born has always been a life more lonely, more apart than any life there is. The forces that mould that life have been forces beyond man’s control; the men who live that life do not, as a rule, discuss the risks that they face every day in the execution of their duty, any more than they talk of that immense and final risk which they are preparing themselves to face at the Day of Armageddon. Even if they did, the world would not believe — would not understand.

So the Navy has been as a rule both inarticulate and unfashionable. Till very recently — till just the other day in fact — when a fleet disappeared under the skyline, it went out into empty space — absolute isolation — with no means visible or invisible of communicating with the shore. It is of course different since Marconi came in, but the tradition of the Navy’s aloofness and separation from the tax-payer world at large still remains.

It is not altogether a bad tradition, d’you think? The Navy represents the man at the wheel in our ship of state, and speaking as a tax-payer, the less the passengers, that is the tax-payers, talk to or about the man at the wheel, the better it will be for all aboard the ship.

Isn’t it possible that the very thoroughness with which the Navy has protected the nation in the past may constitute a source of weakness both for the Navy and the nation? We have been safe for so long, and during all these generations have been so free to follow our own devices, that we tax-payers as a body to-day are utterly ignorant of the facts and the forces on which England depends for her existence. But instead of leaving the Navy alone, as our ancestors did, some of us are now trying to think. And thinking is a highly dangerous performance for amateurs. Some of us are like the monkeys in Brazil. We have sat so long upon the branch that we honestly think we can saw it off and still sit where we were. Some of us think that the Navy does not much matter one way or the other; some of us honestly regard it as a brutal and bloodthirsty anachronism, which if it can’t be openly abolished, ought to be secretly crippled as soon as possible. Such views are not shocking or surprising. After four generations of peace and party politics they are inevitable; but the passengers holding these views need not be encouraged to talk too much to the man at the wheel.

There remain now a few — comparatively very few — of us tax-payers who take an interest in the Navy; but here again our immense ignorance, our utter divorce from the actualities of the Navy or any other Service, handicaps us. Some of us honestly think that navies depend altogether on guns, armour, and machinery, and if we have these better or worse than anyone else, we are mathematically better or worse than anyone else. The battle of Tsu-shima — in the Sea of Japan — has rather upset the calculations; but you know how they are worked out. Multiply the calibre of a ship’s primary armament by the thickness of her average plating in millimetres; add the indicated horse-power of the forward bilge-pumps, and divide it by the temperature of the cordite magazines. Then reduce the result to decimals and point out that what the country needs is more
Incredibles
or
Insupportables
, or whatever the latest fancy pattern of war-canoe happens to be. Now nobody wants to undervalue machinery, but surely, Gentlemen, guns and machinery and armour are only ironmongery after all. They may be the best ironmongery in the world, and we must have them, but if talking, and arguing, and recriminating, and taking sides about them is going to react unfavourably on the men who have to handle the guns and sleep behind the armour, and run the machinery, why then, the less talk we have on Service matters outside the Service, the better all round. Silence is what we want.

Isn’t the morale of a Service a thousandfold more important than its material? Can’t we scratch up a fleet of
Impossibles
or
Undockables
in a few years for a few millions; but hasn’t it taken thirty generations to develop the spirit of the Navy? And is anything except that spirit going to save the nation in the dark days ahead of us?

I don’t know what has happened since the days of Trafalgar to make us think otherwise. The Navy may bulk larger on paper — or in the papers — than it did in Nelson’s time, but it is more separated from the life of the nation than it was then — for the simple reason that it is more specialised and scientific. In peace it exists under conditions which it takes years of training to understand; in war it will be subjected to mental and physical strains three days of which would make the mere sea-fight of Trafalgar a pleasant change and rest. We have no data to guide us for the future, but in judging by our thousand-year-old past, we can believe, and thank God for it, that whatever man may do, or neglect to do, the spirit of the Navy, which is man-made, but which no body of men can kill, will rise to meet and overcome every burden and every disability that may be imposed upon it — from without or within.

The Ritual of Government

I AM
entrusted with a toast which you can easily see demands somewhat cautious handling; for I cannot hide from you that the Houses of Parliament are very largely political in their nature. This has not always been the case. When the Kingdom of Sussex was a sovereign independent State a few hundred years ago, the South Saxons regarded what we should call politics as much less important than piracy, navigation, trade, and sport. On the rare occasions when they interested themselves in politics, the Member for Lewes was as likely as not to record his vote against the hon. Member for Brighthelmstone with an axe or a sword. This method, though conclusive, was found to be wasteful, owing to the expense of repeated bye-elections. The survivors of the debates compromised at last on the counting of heads on a division instead of breaking them. There is much to be said for either plan. If you break heads, you at least discover what is inside them; if you count them, you have to take what is inside them on trust. If you take them on trust you get this whole business of politics as we know it to-day.

But there were certain things which our ancestors dared not take on trust. Courage in war; wisdom in council; skill in administration, ability to sway men; wealth, and craft; were matters which they knew by bitter experience lay at the roots of their national existence. Therefore, when they found a man conspicuously endowed with one or other of these qualities they promoted him, regardless of his birth or antecedents, to the inner council of picked men which from time immemorial has stood next to the King in our Anglo-Saxon Constitution. In doing this our forefathers recognised several things which we, perhaps, overlook. Our fathers created the State. The State did not create our fathers. They knew that men would not work to the utmost for any ambition that is bound by the term of their own little lives, but some men will work for the permanence of their own houses, and for the honour of their sons who come after them. So they said: “Let the son of the picked man succeed to his father’s place in the council when his father dies”. They knew that the son of a picked man, if he is any good at all, is often very valuably equipped with the results of his father’s experience and observations, which he has absorbed unconsciously, in his youth, precisely as the son of a Thames pilot picks up marks and soundings.

If such a man were no good, our ancestors knew he would disappear more quickly from the assembly of the picked men than he would from an ordinary crowd, where the standard of success and the penalties for failure were lower. If he were neither good nor bad, but average, he was, by virtue of his position, independent; and our ancestors may have noticed that they were more likely to get unbiased judgement on a question of public policy from an average independent man than from a very clever one who had something to gain or lose by his answer. Achievement which benefits the kingdom; heredity which gives responsibility and incentive to renewed achievement; independence which inspires fearless advice — these things were vitally important when England was in the making: and surely we have in these things the beginning of the House of Lords. Generation after generation, that Assembly has been recruited from proven capacity in every walk of life to serve the needs of the day according to the standards of the day. The needs and the standards have changed, and to meet them the position of the House has changed too. One-quarter of the present peerage has been created within the last thirty years, since the old road to Rottingdean was shut. One-half of it has come into existence since the foundation-stone of Brighton Town Hall was laid by Mr. Kemp in 1830.

Yet, in essence, the House of Lords is what it was from the first — a body of democratic aristocrats, chosen after trial and observation out of an aristocratic democracy to guard the permanent life of the nation — that inner political life of the race which is very little affected by legislation. Now if aristocracy implies the wealth of inherited tradition, if heredity means the instinct of accumulated experience, then is the House of Commons, equally with the House of Lords, aristocratic and hereditary. Lest there should be any doubt in the matter, it has surrounded itself with an etiquette which would be extreme in a Spanish court; which exacts a deference which would be extravagant at the footstool of a Caesar. Yet it conserves to its members a toleration that would be noticeable in members of a club. There is nothing that a Member of Parliament may not do so long as he respects the written and unwritten laws of the House. This is an excellent tradition, for it is one thing to advocate the repudiation of the National Debt or the abolition of the Navy at sympathetic street-corners; it is quite another thing to explain how you would achieve your ends before an audience of your equals, who may or may not back your sentiments, but who would certainly call you to order if you put on your hat or took it off at the wrong time. This insistence on ceremonial at first sight appears rather a bore, but, when you have to listen to speeches, boredom is an excellent touchstone of character. It is not the actual fighting that tries a man’s nerves so much as the waiting and being ordered about between the engagements.

Then, again, our forefathers were compelled to struggle hand-to-hand against people or institutions that wished to have more power in the State than was good for anyone concerned. The result of these experiences left Englishmen somewhat disinclined to be governed by any class or body, even by their own representatives in Parliament. Up till now, the national idea has been rather to choose capable men and to permit them to govern on the tacit understanding that they were not to govern too much. I suspect, then, that the elaborate ritual and complicated procedure of the House of Commons has been designed by the sense of the House as a barrier against the joys of unbridled legislation. Specialists, like experts, are not unprejudiced. The shoemaker says that there is nothing like leather; the doctor believes that the knife is life; I myself have a bias in favour of the pen; and the legislator is always in favour of making laws for Law’s sake. In spite of our precautions the statute-books of our country are full of laws regulating almost every fact and relation of the Englishman’s life, from the clothes he shall wear to the wages that he shall earn. Most of these laws are dead and inoperative, but the Englishman is still alive and waiting, but not anxiously, for more laws to be tried upon him. Our candid friends tell us that our reluctance to accept law-making as the finest of indoor sports is due to our apathy, our bourgeois nature, and our lack of imagination. Has not someone said or written that our race has been contented to slink through the centuries with no higher object than that of avoiding trouble?

If the charge be true, then “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”. We hold to-day one square mile in every four of the land of the globe, and through our representatives we are responsible for the protection of one person in five out of the entire population of this little planet. May we not be excused if, so far, we have avoided trouble within these limits? May we not be forgiven if we have not exercised our imagination on our fellow-subjects. May we not plead that in the course of our development we have abated the pretensions and cooled the imaginations of kings, churches, armies, mobs, and their leaders? We cannot foresee what the future may send against us, but remembering who and what our fathers were, and trusting our instincts, we may face that future, if not with a light heart, at least with a steady one.

The Verdict of Equals

AS I
understand it and as recent events have, I believe, proved, the Royal Geographical Society is the supreme Court of ultimate appeal and final revision throughout the geographical world.

To you, Gentlemen, in the long run, come all the survivors of all the expeditions — the men who, like many of you here to-night, have borne the extremes of adventure and hardship, to report what they have done in man’s secular battle against Space and Time. To your tribunal they submit the records of their toil. From your hands that record receives its final stamp of worth.