rward to a whole
series of Anglo-Indian tales which present Mr Kipling's idea of the
English in India. Out of his later books we can illustrate a hundred
times his conviction that in India the simplest wisdom is the best.

But there are two kinds of simplicity. The one kind is illustrated in
a tale from _The Day's Work_; it is the right kind of simplicity. In
no story of Mr Kipling is the devoted service and practical
resourcefulness of the good Civilian so movingly celebrated as in the
story of _William the Conqueror_. It is the story of a famine, and of
how it was met by the servants of the Indian Government. The
administration of famine relief would seem to be a simple thing when
the grain has come by rail and only waits to be distributed. But the
district served by the little group of English in _William the
Conqueror_ was a district which did not understand the food of the
North, and, if it could not get the rice which it knew, was ready to
starve within reach of bagsful of unfamiliar wheat or rye. The hero of
the tale is finally reduced to distributing the Government rations to
the goats, and keeping the starving babies alive with milk. It was a
simple idea, and the man to whom it occurred worked himself to death's
door, which was no more than another simple idea of what was due from
him to the district and to his superior officer.

The wrong kind of simplicity is illustrated in a story from _Life's
Handicap_. It is called _The Head of the District_, and it has to do
with a simple idea which occurred to the Viceroy. A Deputy
Commissioner who understood the lawless Khusru Kheyel and had put into
them the fear of English law had died and a successor had to be
appointed. The man for the post was a certain Tallentire who had
worked with the late head of the district and knew the tribe with whom
he had to deal. But the Viceroy had a Principle. He wished to educate
the natives in self-government; and here was an opportunity--a vacant
post of responsibility and a native candidate to fill it.

"There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil Service who had
won his place and a university degree to boot in fair and open
competition with the sons of the English. He was cultured, of the
world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all,
sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. He
had been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there. His name, if
the Viceroy