casuistry of his generation in a region where life is simple and intense. These aspects of his work will be more clearly revealed at a later stage. For the moment we are considering the Indian tales simply as tales of India; and from this point of view they obviously belong to the journalist rather than to the author who has helped to make the English short story respectable. Mr Kipling simply gets out of India the maximum of literary effect as a teller of tales. India, for example, is mysterious. Mr Kipling exploits her mystery competently and coolly, making his points with the precision, clarity and force of one to whom the enterprise begins and ends as an affair of technical adequacy. The point is made with equal ability that India is not without peril and difficulty ruled and administered by the sahibs; or that India has a complicated history; or that India is thickly peopled. Mr Kipling in his Indian tales makes the most of his talent for observing things, always with a keen eye for their effective literary employment. His Indian tales are descriptive journalism of a high quality; and, being journalism, their matter and their doctrine have hit hard the attention of their particular day. This reduces us to the necessity of considering not so much their form and quality as the ideas and doctrines they contain--a barren task but necessary in order to clear away many misconceptions with regard to Mr Kipling's work. Regarded as literature, Mr Kipling's Indian tales are mainly of note as preparing in him that enthusiasm for the work of the world which, later, was to inspire his greatest pages; as finally leading him in _Kim_ to a door whereby he was able to pass into the region of pure fancy where alone he is supremely happy, and as prompting in him the instinct to simplify which urged him into the jungle and into the minds of children. But all this has very little to do with India. So long as we are dealing with Mr Kipling's Indian stories as in themselves finished and intrinsic studies of India, we remain only in the suburbs of Mr Kipling's merit as an author. The Simla tales are not more than a skilful employment of a literary convention which Mr Kipling did not inherit. The Anglo-Indian and native tales are the not less skilful work of a young newspaper man breaking into a storehouse of new material. We are interested firstly in Mr Kipling's craft as a technician, as one who makes the most of his theme deliberately and self-consciously; and secondly in Mr Kipling's point of view, in the impressions and ideas he has collected concerning the country of which he writes. Until we arrive at _The Day's Work_ we shall be mainly occupied in clearing the ground of impertinent prejudices concerning Mr Kipling's temperament and politics. For though the Indian and soldier tales are as literature not impregnable to criticism, they can at any rate be rescued from those who have