Monday, March 18, AD 2024 11:43pm

Kipling on Benghazi

The fifteenth in my ongoing series examining the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. The other posts in the series may be read here, here , here , here,  here , here, here, here, here , here, here, here , here and here.

 

At National Review Online they had the superb idea of taking Kipling’s poem Mesopotamia and applying it to the Benghazi debacle.  The Mesopotamian, modern day Iraq, Campaign had been a disaster for the British in 1916 with a British army surrendering to the Turks at Kut.  British public opinion was outraged at the incompetence that led to the defeat.  When a report by the government on Kut was published in 1917, Kipling responded with his devastating poem.  (Ironically the British in 1917, under the able General Frederick Maude, had succeeded in capturing Baghdad by the time the poem appeared.)  The lines of the Kipling poem do seem to apply word for word to the Benghazi shame:

 1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

 The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

 But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

 Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

  They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain

 In sight of help denied from day to day:

 But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

 Are they too strong and wise to put away?

  Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide–

Never while the bars of sunset hold.

 But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,

 Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

  Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour:

 When the storm is ended shall we find

 How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

 By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

  Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

 Even while they make a show of fear,

 Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

 To conform and re-establish each career?

  Their lives cannot repay us–their death could not undo–

The shame that they have laid upon our race.

 But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,

 Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

 

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philip
philip
Sunday, November 4, AD 2012 11:28pm

…but the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died…shall they thrust for high employments as of old? Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour….

Donald. All of it fits unfortunately. Angry for an hour? So absurd that O uses ( revenge ) in his rousing the libs, yet washes his hands with video rubbish. I pray a tsunami of votes sweeps away the destructor.
Thanks for this Kipling poem which parallels the disgrace in Benghazi.

Louise
Monday, November 5, AD 2012 2:18pm

Wow! Powerful then and still today.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, November 5, AD 2012 5:15pm

From ‘Epitaphs of the War 1914 – 1918’
R. Kipling

“COMMON FORM

“If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

“A DEAD STATESMAN

“I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?”

My main “issue” with the latter is the good statesman is not where the heroes’ souls repose.

philip
philip
Monday, November 5, AD 2012 7:05pm

T Shaw….that’s powerful!
Life for all, born & unborn.

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