os facimus, Fortuna, deam_--and have not even the nerve, without its
sanction, to stick a knife into an old man whom you accuse as the wicked
cause of all this bloodshed. If you believed in your accusations, why
couldn't you do it? Because a universal law forbade you, and one you have
to believe in, truculent Jingo though you be. Why, consider this; your
poets are hymning King Edward the Seventh as the greatest man on earth,
and yet, if he might possess all Africa to-morrow at the expense of
signing the death-warrant of one innocent man who opposed that possession,
he could not write his name. His hand would fall numb. Such power above
kings has the Universal, though silly poets insult it who should be its
servants.

"Now of all the differences between men and women there is none more
radical than this: that a man naturally loves law, whereas a woman
naturally hates it and never sees a law without casting about for some way
of dodging it. Laws, universals, general propositions--her instinct with
all of them is to get off by wheedling the judge. So, if you want a test
for a masculine poet, examine first whether or no he understands the
Universe as a thing of law and order."

"Then, by your own test, Kipling--the Jingo Kipling--is a most masculine
poet, since he talks of little else."

"I will answer you, although I believe you are not serious. At present
Mr. Kipling's mind, in search of a philosophy, plays with the
contemplation of a world reduced to law and order; the law and order being
such as universal British rule would impose. There might be many worse
worlds than a world so ruled, and in verse the prospect can be made to
look fair enough:--"

"'Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience--
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap where he hath sown;
By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord!'

"Clean and wholesome teaching it seems, persuading civilised men that, as
they are strong, so the obligation rests on them to set the world in
order, carry tillage into its wildernesses, and clean up its bloodstained
corners. Yet as a political philosophy it lacks the first of all
essentials, and as Mr. Kipling develops it we begin to detect the flaw in
the system:--

"'The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood and stone;
'E don't obey no orders unless they is his own;
'E keeps 'i