Rudyard Kipling Archives - Richard M. Langworth

D-Day +79: “Rough Men Stand Ready,” a Shared Sentiment

Richard M. Langworth — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 16:29:33 +0000

Excerpted from “’Rough Men Stand Ready’: Neither Churchill nor Orwell,” written for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. For the original article with endnotes, click here. To subscribe to weekly articles from Hillsdale-Churchill, click here, scroll to bottom, and fill in your email in the box entitled “Stay in touch with us.” Your email address is never given out and remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Q: D-Day remembrance: Rough men stood ready….

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Is this something Churchill said? I see it frequently credited to him. Another version reads: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” —L.K., Dallas

A: Not Churchill, not Orwell

Churchill would have approved of the sentiment, but it is not possible to attribute this phrase to him through our digital scans of 80 million words by and about WSC. It is also often assigned to George Orwell, but hasn’t been reliably tracked to him, either. He did, however, write something similar.

Reader Steve Brantley referred us to Orwell’s 1945 article, “Notes on Nationalism.” Here Orwell writes that pacifists cannot accept the statement, “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.” Nevertheless, Orwell added, the truth of the thing was “grossly obvious.”

Reader Tom Kovatch furthered the search by advising us that the “rough men” quote might be “Orwellian Drift.” As with “Churchillian Drift,” these are words placed in a famous person’s mouth to make them more interesting. That led us to Quote Investigator, an outstanding website which tracks quotations and exposes fake attributions.

Churchill to Orwell to Kipling

Quote Investigator offers a page of explanation tracking the Rough Men quote to a 1993 Washington Times column by film critic and essayist Richard Grenier: “As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Of course, Orwell no more than Churchill ever said precisely that.

But Quote Investigator digs deeper, coming up with a parallel sentiment by Rudyard Kipling, in his 1890 poem “Tommy”:
O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap…

Orwell, Quote Investigator tells us, referred to that poem in 1943:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, “making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep.”

“Very Well, Alone”: David Low’s Churchillesque cartoon from June 1940. (Wikimedia Commons)

Quote Investigator provides a vast subtext to the various appearances and credits of “Rough men stand ready” over the years, to which we refer readers. Their conclusion is that no one specifically said the words, but Kipling may have inspired them. They are certainly in the Churchill spirit.

Shared Sentiments

While neither Churchill nor Orwell uttered the words, they held the same attitude toward the defense of liberty. As Andrew Roberts notes in his review of Thomas Ricks’s Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom:

Churchill and Orwell were both war correspondents, their prose styles partly conditioned by the urgent need to telegraph stories back from battlefields before being scooped by rivals. But it is very much in the political sphere that Ricks connects the two strangers—Churchill generally from the center-Right, Orwell from the Left—to make them what Simon Schama has called “the most unlikely of allies.”

Liberties: Where will it end? A very good question.

Richard M. Langworth — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 13:29:34 +0000

Liberties watch, 8 April 2020

…we must regard the next week or so as a very important period in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon‘s Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the history books, but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilisation than these brave old days of the past. —Winston S. Churchill on a certain threat to liberties, 11 September 1940

Here at home…

The New Hampshire Lakes Region is remarkably normal. Lake Winnipesaukee, pristine and beautiful, already has boats in the water. We visit the lakeside and feed the ducks, oblivious to it all. Ach, to be a duck….

The governor has judiciously specified many businesses that remain open. Of course, what works in NH may not work in NY. Thus, in a federal republic, such decisions are best left to the states. The U.S. and Canada leave the border open to commercial traffic. Our new electric launch arrived from Montreal. Groceries, supermarkets, nurseries are well stocked. Mechanics, auto parts stores, hardware and liquor stores (thank heaven), are all open with precautions. Our favorite cheese shop. Restaurants and bistros do take-outs; the landscapers with their meticulous Puerto Rican crews are making their annual visit, singing away.

And yet….

Mark Steyn raises interesting posers about liberties. Like, how will it end? Presumably we will be told, at some future date, to return to “normal.” What is normal, he asks? Suppose then it flares up again? Fifty-one recovered South Koreans have tested positive the second time round. Suppose a “recovered” family in Kansas flies up to Idaho for Thanksgiving, and there’s a fresh bloom in Boise? The Spanish Flu lasted three years. We are told that the only true cure and end to this one is a vaccine. Eighteen months away, they say.

Which begs a question…

We cannot afford to confide the safety of our country to the passions or to the panic of any foreign nation which may be facing some desperate crisis. We must be independent [and free to] preserve our full latitude and discretion of choice. In the past we have always had this freedom and independence. I have heard reproaches about the Liberal Government before the War, that they did not make enough preparations or look far enough ahead. But we were in a position where, at any rate, we had a complete freedom of choice; much might be lost by delay. But, as far as the safety of this country was concerned, we were not in any danger. We could hold our own here and take what time we chose to make up our minds, and what time we required. —Churchill, House of Commons, 8 March 1934

How many more liberties will we lose now? I’ve watched my second country, The Bahamas, locked down by a blanket, one-size-fits-all emergency order that left the sparsely populated Out Islands without ready access to their handful of grocery stores. (Since rescinded.) Intimidated, the local airlines to just…stopped—stranding snowbirds unable to reach Nassau for flights home. We are grateful that we left in time.

What about America? We’ve lost so many liberties since 9/11. We shuffle shoeless through airport checkpoints that have yet to expose a terrorist, because Richard Reid tried to blow up his shoe in 2001. Supinely we submit to intrusive body scans and rifled luggage. Minor stuff, we say. But there’s more. Our emails are read, our web profiles analyzed, by murky government departments. We can’t say certain words without being flagged. In Britain, the average commuter is photographed nineteen times (not sure of the exact figure) from door to workplace.

What’s next?

Already petty tyrannies are cropping up, Mr. Steyn reports. A Manhattan married couple who live together sit on a bench in Central Park. They are accosted by Authority and threatened with a summons for not maintaining a six-foot distance. A shop manager in England chalks a six-foot line on the pavement, hoping to show customers how far apart to stand. A constable accuses her of graffiti.

It is not much of a leap to far more serious nationwide infringements, all in the name of saving us from ourselves. Maybe needed, maybe not. Admittedly, leadership has to walk a fine line between civil liberties and civil safety. And common sense is a scarce commodity. The Bahamas first clamped down when the Prime Minister was enraged by all the bodies on the beaches, long after the alarms were sounded.

Will there be, must there be, another massive bureaucracy, authorized to to shut down our businesses, shut down our lives, with the same efficiency that TSA discovers terrorists? Are remaining liberties worth preserving? These are questions worth pondering. I don’t know the answers. So I asked a wise man. I hope you listen. Click here.

Recessional

Far-called our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

—Rudyard Kipling, 1897

Boris, Racism, Imperialism, and “The Road to Mandalay”

Richard M. Langworth — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 17:42:30 +0000

Prime Ministers are always popular targets, and Boris Johnson wore the bullseye as well as the rest. One shaft was directed at his “insensitivity” in reciting “The Road to Mandalay” on a visit to Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). In the immortal words of John Kennedy, let us say this about that.

* * * * *

“I appointed [Lord Roberts‘s] Commander-in-Chief in India when I was Secretary of State. That was the year I annexed Burma. The place was in utter anarchy. They were just butchering one another. We had to step in, and very soon there was an ordered, civilized Government under the vigilant control of the House of Commons.” There was a sort of glare in his eyes as he said “House of Commons.”

—Lord Randolph Churchill to Winston Churchill in The Dream, 1947

Mandalay as dog whistle

Generally speaking nowadays, we deem paeans to the British Empire to be imperialist, racist twaddle. Here’s a belabored example, which defines Rudyard Kipling‘s The Road to Mandalay as a dog whistle for misogynist racism. (Read the poem first if you’re not familiar with it.)

“The girl has no real identity other than as a source of fascination for the young man. [The poem] idealizes the imperialist experience. In reality, the British who were in Burma were not there as travelers or adventure-seekers; they were there to pilfer and oppress… Racism was rampant, and even though in this poem the girl is admired and lusted after, she is still only an exotic object and someone to be “civilized” by the British.”

Speaking of twaddle, “the girl” has a name. We learn she plays the banjo, is devout, smokes cheroots, has no racial animosity and, apparently, contemplates nature. Isn’t that real identity? The British did more than “pilfer and oppress” in Burma. They broke up a religious war. (The ghost of Lord Randolph Churchill, in his son’s short story, says, “they were just butchering each other.”* Religion, then as now, has much to answer for.) Brits built schools, roads, hospitals, and brought an ordered peace. True, it was far from the 21st century ideal. There was racism, and as in India, an upper class of locals and some English ran everything. But civilized people, including the Burmese, prefer living to dying.

All too often we take offense at the inconsequential. I will however indulge in it over The Road to Mandalay. There is nothing imperialist or racist in the poem, except for the most strained denizens of the fever swamps. The writer makes that claim because of a prior mindset, but offers nothing to support it. Where’s the evidence?

Mandalay as progressive poetry?

A friend who never read the poem before sent me his impression: “It seems to recall the allure and beauty of a country where a soldier was asked to do a dangerous job, and a people he later longed to be with again.”

Let’s go even further. If we want to be fair, isn’t Mandalay a remarkably progressive 1890 endorsement of interracial harmony? Interpreting it as mere lust after “an exotic object and someone to be ‘civilized'” only displays ignorance. Clearly the writer didn’t read it well. It contains no expressions of lust, only loneliness. That is what Kipling’s soldier is saying. He wants to go back to a land and a girl he loves, and both are Asian.

Mandalay even indulges modern readers with a gesture of Political Correctness. The soldier says, “We useter watch the steamers an’ the hathis pilin’ teak.” Then he hastens to explain: “Elephints a-pilin’ teak.” (The Hindi word for “elephant” is “haathee.”) That is no less a bow to P.C. than our modern haste to call Burma by its new name Myanmar—proclaimed in 1989 by the ruling military junta.*

About the only offensive thing in Mandalay is the soldier’s reference to the Buddha as “the Great Gawd Budd.” So a tommy in 1890 should have understood Buddhism? Cut the man some slack. Pray consider what he says about his own Christian white girls. “Beefy faced an’ grubby—Law! wot do they understand? I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!”

Boris’ undiplomatic foray

In 2017, on a visit to Myanmar’s magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda, Boris Johnson was overcome by nostalgia. Suddenly he began reciting, “At the old Moulmein pagoda….” Psst., whispered the British Ambassador, “that’s probably not a good idea.” (Did he think Myanmar’s leaders study Kipling?)

Covering this at the time was The Guardian‘s thoughtful Ian Jack. The Guardian is no right-wing mouthpiece, and Mr. Jack excoriated Boris for being undiplomatic. Fair enough, though Johnson was probably just giving in to schoolboy romanticism. But what Mr. Jack writes about Kipling is worthy of consideration:

Postcolonial studies can have few richer specimens to tease apart in the space of 51 lines: race, class, power, gender, the erotic, the exotic and what anthropologists and historians call “colonial desire”…. Kipling wrote poetry and prose that certainly deserves the epithet, notably The White Man’s Burden. He was a child of empire, and became the empire’s laureate. But Mandalay isn’t so much an argument for colonialism as an evocation of its personal effects….

There is always, eventually, an awkwardness with Kipling: the race and empire issue. [Historian Geoff] Hutchinson got round it by having his Kipling say something to the effect that he knew his views grew out of different time—though even in that different time, Kipling was unusually committed to mystical ideas of national character and destiny. [Emphasis mine.]**

“A different time” is how unread people try to excuse what others call the racist imperialism of Churchill. But like Kipling, Churchill had more admirable and deeper motivations. Ideas about liberty and human rights. Among them were “the mystical ideas of national character and destiny.”

Appreciating The Road to Mandalay

Whatever the British did in Burma 135 years ago, to look upon Mandalay as Victorian imperialism is unjust to the poem. That is not why Mandalay was recited so beautifully by Charles Dance before 14th Army vets on VJ Day +70 in 2015. That is not why I choke up listening to that broadcast on Youtube, mingled with footage of the Indian Army (whites, blacks and browns) fighting Japan.

Imperial Japan had fewer benevolent things in mind for Burma than Imperial Britain. And that is why the poem is linked in Professor Raymond Callahan’s account, “Bill Slim and his Heroic Indian Army,” for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project.

In the end, even Mr. Johnson’s critic Mr. Jack had a kind thing to say about the (now-former) PM:

You could hear a tame, ironized echo of these ideas in Boris Johnson’s speech to the Tory conference: “We are not the lion. We do not claim to be the lion…. But it is up to us now—in the traditional non-threatening and genial, self-deprecating way of the British—to let that lion roar.”

Endnotes

* Winston Churchill was particularly dismissive of, even refused to fall in with, nations that change names. In Triumph and Tragedy (1953) he cites a memo he wrote on 23 April 1945:

I do not consider that names that have been familiar for generations in England should be altered to study the whims of foreigners living in those parts. Where the name has no particular significance the local custom should be followed. However, Constantinople should never be abandoned, though for stupid people Istanbul may be written in brackets after it. As for Angora, long familiar with us through the Angora cats, I will resist to the utmost of my power its degradation to Ankara.…

Bad luck…always pursues people who change the names of their cities. Fortune is rightly malignant to those who break with the traditions and customs of the past. As long as I have a word to say in the matter Ankara is banned, unless in brackets afterwards. If we do not make a stand we shall in a few weeks be asked to call Leghorn Livorno, and the BBC will be pronouncing Paris “Paree.” Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names. I date this minute from St. George’s Day.

** Ironically, Mr. Jack added, the problem with Mandalay back in 1890 was geography, not racism: “A century ago what gave Kipling most trouble from his readers were his liberties with geography. The dawn couldn’t come up like thunder “outer China ‘crost the Bay,” because the Bay (of Bengal) lies to the west of Burma, not the east. According to the memoir the author wrote at the end of his life, the complaints came mainly from pedantic Americans on cruise ships….”

Pearl Harbor +75: All in the Same Boat. Still.

Richard M. Langworth — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 21:27:45 +0000

A slightly extended version of my piece on Pearl Harbor: “How, 75 years ago today, we were saved,” in The American Spectator, 7 December 2016….

“All in the same boat.” New Bond Street, London. (Sculpture by Lawrence Holofcener)

Seventy-five years ago today, Winston Churchill was pondering survival. Hitler gripped Europe from France to deep inside Russia. Nazi U-boats were strangling British shipping; Rommel’s Afrika Korps was advancing on Suez. Britain’s only ally beside the Empire/Commonwealth, the Red Army, was fighting before Moscow. America remained supportive…and aloof.

Eighteen months earlier he had become prime minister. No one else had wanted the task. “God alone knows how great it is,” he muttered, his eyes filling. “I hope that it is not too late.”

On the evening of December 7th, despondent over odds against him, Churchill was alerted to a radio broadcast. The Japanese had attacked the American fleet in Hawaii. Quickly he telephoned Washington: “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?”

“It’s quite true,” came the booming voice of his friend across the Atlantic. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor….We are all in the same boat now.” A supreme climacteric had occurred. For generations, Americans would ask where they were on December 7th, as we do now for 9/11.

“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy,” Churchill wrote:

I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!…Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

Pearl Harbor not only awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve (as Admiral Yamamoto is said to have observed). It welded an enduring relationship among the English-speaking Peoples. Today we call it the Anglosphere: the great democracies—and by that I mean to include India—which share to a great extent the same values, the same ideals.

What are they? Churchill defined them: “Common conceptions of what is right and decent; a marked regard for fair play; especially to the weak and poor; a stern sentiment of impartial justice; and above all the love of personal freedom, or as Kipling put it: ‘Leave to live by no man’s leave underneath the law’—these are common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking Peoples.”

To know the present, know the past

Churchill’s wisdom is Hillsdale College’s privilege, as publisher of his official biography, to refract. Every day we pour through his archive, spanning fifty years of global prominence. Every day we are struck, as biographer Martin Gilbert before us, “by the truth of his assertions, the modernity of his thought, the originality of his mind, the constructiveness of his proposals, his humanity, and, most remarkable of all, his foresight.”

He was right, of course, 75 years ago. We were saved after all. “We stood together, and because of that fact the free world now stands. Let no man underrate our energies, our potentialities and our abiding power for good.”

The spirit of common purpose which Britain, America and the Commonwealth forged in 1941 serves today in countless relationships: commercial, economic, political, military: a fresh focus on national security in an un-national world. Whether the challenge is tyranny or globalization, fanaticism or free trade, our past is the key to our future. And hanging together, as the patriot Richard Penn said, is preferable to hanging separately.

Raymond Seitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain, likes to picture the park bench in London where a sculptor placed a life-size bronze of Churchill and Roosevelt sitting together, smiling and shooting the breeze:

“They may be talking about where matters stand and how to handle things. They may be doing in someone’s reputation. Or maybe they’re recollecting that day a long time ago when they heard about Pearl Harbor and strapped their nations together in joint purpose. And maybe they’re saying that, even if today the ocean is different, we’re still in the same boat.”

Let no one underrate our energies, our potentialities, and our abiding power for good.