Mr. Kipling was violent ; that also was
welcome. Violence had wearied Wilde and
his school; if they depicted it, it was the
violence of the lover deceived, not of the soldier
in action. There had been, outside the work
of the .SIsthetes, a reign of prudery so exces-
sive that the word ' sjre ' had been cut out of
a Savoy libretto as suggestive of the stud farm.
There was a pleasant thrill in reading the work
of a man who was not afraid to use language
such as real men used. The oaths of the smok-

16



INTRODUCTION

ing-room, the more picturesque blasphemy of
Tommy Atkins on the march and in canteen
were vastly fascinating in print. And there
was satisfaction to a people, of whom every
year a greater proportion entered the factory
and workshop or sat upon the ofi&ce stool, to
learn that there were yet men of its race in
whom, out on the frontiers of civilization,
burned the old unruly fires.
Above all, Mr. Kipling was new. He had the
^ fortune to find himself in possession of mines
almost virgin, and he made good use of them.
He was not, of course, their discoverer, but he
was the first who knew how to extract the ore.
The average Englishman, if he had no relations
in the Indian Civil Service, had the vaguest
possible knowledge of India, a knowledge based
on tales of the Mutiny, sentimental modem
novels, and casual conversations with those
most uncommunicative of beings, the officers
of His Majesty's Army. It was to him, as was
Persia, Arabia, or even Egypt, a hot country
of palms, and black men who wore turbans.
