Volume 20, Number 3 · March 8, 1973
The Insider
By Noel Annan
The Age of Kipling
edited by John Gross
Simon and Schuster, 178 pp., $12.95
Books on Kipling these days are usually elegant apologia. No one bothers to refute the imperialist assertion—regarded by Kipling as an axiom—that the life of action, of ruling, of imposing political will upon hordes of natives is not so much a noble calling as an inexorable law of nature. Kipling's imperialism is taken for granted, and his text is then—very properly—combed for all the qualifications and modifications he made of imperialism and for his dire warnings against the folly of hubris. So in this collection of essays which Mr. Gross has edited, Philip Mason points out how ambivalent Kipling was toward the Indian Civil Service; Robert Conquest remarks how Kipling combined romanticism in his verse with colloquial matter-of-fact language; and Eric Stokes reminds us that Kipling's hatred of white men who exploited natives surpassed his contempt for the inability of the natives to govern themselves.
Review, 4209 words
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