Shall the common manbe pushed back into the mud, or
shall he not?
Much of what he says they couldnot possibly
approve.
It can be taken as quite certain that he is
dead.
Becausethey were pro-Fascist, was the obvious
answer.
It may not be true, butat any rate it is a thought
that everyone thinks.
This is probably what is known asa Freudian error.
Shall the common manbe pushed back into the mud, or shall he not? The most baffling
thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the greatpowers.
Well,slavery has been restored under our noses. It
is difficult to think of this particular mans probableend without several kinds of
bitterness.
But that does notaffect the long-term issues. But
in saying this, does not one unsay what I said above about Kiplingsjingoism and
brutality?
Much of what he says they couldnot possibly
approve.
The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans
and Italians,whose motives were obvious enough. Kiplings official admirers are and
were the service middle class, thepeople who read BLACKWOODS.
Or did they, as theTrotskyists suggested, intervene
simply in order to PREVENT a Spanishrevolution? Kipling sold out to the
Britishgoverning class, not financially but emotionally.
The middle-class Left hate him forthis quite as
much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. It is no use pretending that in an age like
our own, good poetry canhave any genuine popularity. It is, and must be, the cult of
a very fewpeople, the least tolerated of the arts.