Adventure stories, English -- History and criticism; Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 -- Criticism and interpretation
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 recollected aright, was Mr Grish Chunder De, M.A. In
short, did anybody see any objection to the appointment, always on
principle, of a man of the people to rule the people? The district in
South-Eastern Bengal might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over to
a younger civilian of Mr G. C. De's nationality (who had written a
remarkably clever pamphlet on the political value of sympathy in
administration); and Mr G. C. De could be transferred northward. As
regarded the mere question of race, Mr Grish Chunder De was more
English than the English, and yet possessed of that peculiar sympathy
and insight which the best among the best Service in the world could
only win to at the end of their service."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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