efficiency which belongs quite as much to
engineers, or sailors, or mules, or railway engines. And thus it is
that when he writes of engineers, or sailors, or mules, or
steam-engines, he writes at his best. The real poetry, the "true
romance" which Mr. Kipling has taught, is the romance of the division
of labour and the discipline of all the trades. He sings the arts of
peace much more accurately than the arts of war. And his main
contention is vital and valuable. Every thing is military in the sense
that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly
epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere
men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling
ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are
glad that the net-maker did not make the hammock in a fit of divine
carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke. But
we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for
a joke. So far from having merely preached that a soldier cleaning his
side-arm is to be adored because he is military, Kipling at his best
and clearest has preached that the baker baking loaves and the tailor
cutting coats is as military as anybody.

Being devoted to this multitudinous vision of duty, Mr. Kipling is
naturally a cosmopolitan. He happens to find his examples in the
British Empire, but almost any other empire would do as well, or,
indeed, any other highly civilized country. That which he admires in
the British army he would find even more apparent in the German army;
that which he desires in the British police he would find flourishing,
in the French police. The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life,
but it is spread over the whole of the world. And the worship of it
tends to confirm in Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of
the experience of the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of
his best work.

The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lack of
patriotism--that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of
attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically; for
all finality must be tragic. He admires England, but he does not love
her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons.
He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.
There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows
it with his usual pictu