Appendix C

An Analysis of Mesopotamia

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

75. Rudyard Kipling. (The Kipling Society)

Mesopotamia
1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain

In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide –

Never while the bars of sunset hold.

But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,

Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?

When the storm is ended shall we find

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

Even while they make a show of fear,

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

To conform and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us – their death could not undo –

The shame that they have laid upon our race.

But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,

Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

Kipling was a well-established literary figure by the outbreak of the First World War and, in 1907, won the Nobel Peace Prize for literature, the first English-language recipient, and the youngest. He was a great admirer of the British soldier and a shrewd observer, as evidenced by his well-known Barrack Room Tales.

At the beginning of the First World War, Kipling was too old to serve in uniform, so he had to settle for contributing to the cause by writing pamphlets and poems in support of the UK’s war aims. Not the least of these was the restoration of Belgium after that country had been occupied by Germany. In September 1914, Kipling was asked by the British Government to write propaganda, an offer that he immediately accepted.

Kipling’s penmanship was not only popular, but was also effective. The main thrust of his work was to extol the virtues of the British military, but in addition, he wrote vividly about German atrocities against Belgian civilians – not all based on fact. But then, that is the nature of propaganda.

The sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915 enraged Kipling, who judged it to be a deeply inhumane act. He characterised the war as a crusade for civilization against barbarism. In a 1915 speech, Kipling declared, somewhat excessively, 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.’³¹⁹

The heavy loss of life that the BEF had taken by the autumn of 1914 shocked Kipling, who laid the blame at the doors of the entire pre-war generation of British politicians. He argued that they 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.³²⁰

Kipling’s son, John, died in the First World War, at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, aged just eighteen. John had volunteered for the Royal Navy, but after a failed medical examination due to his poor eyesight, he then applied for military service as an army officer. His eyesight remained an obstacle and he was, once more, rejected. His father was a lifelong friend of Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army and Colonel of the Irish Guards. At his father’s request, John was accepted into the Irish Guards, notwithstanding his failure to meet the medical criteria.³²¹

John was sent to his battalion at Loos in a reinforcement contingent. He was last seen badly wounded by shrapnel. An unsuccessful search for the boy’s body became Kipling’s post-war mission. A corpse identified as his was found in 1992, although that identification has since been challenged. The death of his son was a burden Kipling carried for the rest of his life.

Rudyard Kipling’s Mesopotamia was published on 11 July 1917, when the Report of the Mesopotamia Commission was being hotly debated. The poem appeared simultaneously in the London Morning Post and the New York Times. It was masterly timing, designed to gain maximum exposure. Kipling’s earlier propaganda work had already drawn him into the political scene and such was his standing that his anger at events in Mesopotamia expressed in his poetry demanded attention and struck a chord with the general public. Julian Moore wrote a paper in 2006 analysing Mesopotamia, and this commentary, especially its structure, owes much to his work, which is acknowledged.

Kipling wanted there to be retribution for those whose culpable incompetence had led to so many avoidable deaths. The preceding text in this book makes only too clear that the campaign was notable for the failures in every facet of the expedition. Strategically it was flawed; however, tactically, due to Townshend, it was effective. That is until the already flawed balance between operations and the logistic support became evident. The medical drum needs no further banging here.

Kipling presumes the reader will be aware of the specific aspects that he addresses, and so he rails against the political and military leadership responsible for the debacle in the desert, bringing to bear all of his formidable rhetoric. ‘In six quatrains of ballad-like rhyme and metre’,³²² Moore avers that Kipling ‘has aimed volleys on behalf of the common soldier at’:

the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain

and

the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died.

The poet was not alone in being outraged that those responsible were not subject to trial and punishment. Some just walked way into genteel retirement; others, like Duff, Nixon and Townshend, were exonerated. Some might take the view that, had Townshend not been a prisoner of war and been interrogated, he might have been found wanting. Hardinge, who never expressed regret or remorse, gave events in Mesopotamia scant cover in his autobiography. He went on to be Ambassador to France, no less. Kipling poses the question:

Shall they thrust for high employment as of old?

He continues with a clear reference to Hardinge by writing:

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Another question:

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends, to confirm and re-establish each career?

Kipling, ever the patriot, disassociates himself from:

The shame that they have laid upon our race.

Moore, seeking to be even-handed, makes the valid point that Nixon was only part of a very complicated chain of command. He observed that,

Nixon was directly responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, Indian Army, who answered to the Viceroy, who received orders from the Secretary of State for India, who was advised by the Military Secretary for India, who was responsible to the War Council, which was commanded by the Imperial Staff, which answered, finally, to the Cabinet. Since half of this chain was in India, and half in London, problems in administration and military command were virtually insurmountable, and gave rise to Kipling’s bitter resentment of:

the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died.

The Indian Army was the epitome of bureaucratic inefficiency, and as a result, officers of the British Army had little time for the organisation, chain of command and customs of the Indian Army. The Mutiny of 1857 by sepoys in the Army of the East India Company was still within living memory, and there was an unreasonable question mark over the discipline of the Indian Army and the competence of its Anglo-Indian officers. Townshend, who was an officer of the Indian Army, held his soldiers in low regard and had done so since the siege of Chitral in 1895. Kipling observed this attitude and, knowing that half the expedition had been killed and the survivors had suffered the most dreadful neglect and deprivation, it is little wonder that he wrote of:

the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew.

The public response to the disaster of the campaign was to call for an investigation; Kipling was entirely at ease with that, and so he wrote:

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?

Kipling made no bones about his view of the multiple administrative nonsenses, reminding his readers that:

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain

In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Hardinge and Duff were the targets and specifically the,

idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died.

The Morning Post took a very strong line and used the Mesopotamia Commission as a weapon to attack Hardinge, who because of his recent appointment as Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office was seen as an instrument of the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. The reintroduction of Hardinge to the centre of government also offended the poet and gave rise to the bitter lines:

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Kipling was not alone in his anger. This was shared by most of the Press, and his indictment of those involved and of the British Government attracted general support. The fact that the culprits were apparently to walk away, not only unpunished but also rewarded, was the trigger for the following:

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

Even while they make a show of fear,

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

To confirm and re-establish each career?

Kipling posed the question, and the answer was highly unsatisfactory. The foregoing text has dealt with the manner in which the main players in this drama had been quietly exculpated ‘and the whitewash that so appalled Kipling was complete’, so Julian Moore summed up, and he has the last word, saying:

For the modern reader, the verses have a power that transcends their specific political origin. They embody all the frustrated outbursts of a civilian public watching a generation of soldiers die at the behest of incompetent generals, and at the insidious command of self-interested politicians. This is Kipling at his most stentorian. The imperial trumpeter had become the public herald.³²³

Chapter notes

319 Gilmour, D., The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, p.250.

320 Ibid, p.251.

321 Bilsing, T., ‘The Process Of Manufacture of Rudyard Kipling’s Private Propaganda’, War Literature and The Arts, Summer 2000, retrieved 15 August 2013.

322 Moore, J., Mesopotamia, 2006.

323 Ibid.