Some seats of learning say that they are developing in their sons the spirit that shall take full count and advantage of high faith and cold reason alike. Of that I cannot judge. But of this I am sure — that you hold under your hand unequalled chances for begetting such a spirit in the combined life, thought, and work of the College and the University. For you are stationed here in the heart of a vigorous and many-minded people — in a city opulent, energetic, experienced in the application of means to practical ends, and touching, through a myriad interests and dealings, the ends of all the earth. This is a keen and tense atmosphere rightly reflected in the life of your College. On the other hand, you have within artillery range the ancient University less touched than you by these surroundings or considerations, less impelled than you to the forefront of material strife and inquiry, but maintaining always her secular reserve of accumulated wisdom, which modulates knowledge, and that detachment of view which directs, but does not destroy, human sympathies with all aspects of life. Dundee and St. Andrews are necessary, and, in the present posture of the world’s dislocated thought and action, vitally necessary, to each other. There seems to me, then, an ideal marriage; but, like most marriages, it depends for much of its happiness upon material considerations. Gentlemen of Dundee, makers of the city’s fortune, merchant-princes — they tell me that the bride here is ill-dowered. Is it because she has grown up unnoticed, among you so long that she has to take the world with no full sufficiency of gear to be proud of? The standard of living has risen? The more reason, then, that the standard of thought should rise with it. From what I have seen and felt of the life of the Students’ Union at St. Andrews, it has occurred to me that your city might fitly give to her children here their own lodge of the young men, their own temple of youth, where young men associated together even for childish things, may realise what manner of corporate spirit they serve now, and to what compelling idea they are under obligation in the future. It is not easy to make these things plain in the crowded life and ways of a vast city to busy students coming and going to their homes at the day’s end. But give them their own dining halls and gathering grounds, and that divine spirit of youth, which seeks only an outlet, will create all the rest — lightly, unconsciously, but enduringly.
You and I have seen many men ruined by mere money thrown at them without thought. But independent men who have elected to be bound to hard work till their life’s end take little harm from being given the best equipment, the best thought-out set of working-tools that can fit them for their callings. There is room for such equipment, whether it be instruments, laboratories, halls, or new wings to existing buildings; and since a gift is of no avail unless the giver comes with it, there is room for interest, pride, and care. I agree with you that the present moment, when the key-industry of Great Britain is tax-gathering, is not best chosen for an appeal. You will observe, therefore, that I make no appeal. I merely suggest to you opportunity to advance the honour and interest of your University College. It may also be that the name and line of some of you must now die out for lack of succession. Seeing what great things the dead have done, you may desire to keep that name alive among young men in memory of some son of yours who should have borne it. If so, your road is open.
But it is to the living that we must look, and, though much has been taken away, yet to us who have still the light of the sun and the darkness of earth to deal with, much has been given. And as surely as Science is real and Faith is true, so surely much is required of us.
* * *
Work in the Future
ON reflection — such reflection as such a dinner as this induces — it strikes me that the toast I have to propose is more than usually superfluous. It is too easy. All I have to do for the next few minutes is to wish you prosperity. All you have to do for the next few years is to go out and get it. As, of course, you will. Indeed, you cannot very well escape doing so. Your path has been smoothed for just that end.
When Mr. Rhodes was brooding over his scheme of the scholarships, he used to say: “The game is to get them to knock up against each other qua students. After they’ve done that for three years at Oxford they’ll never forget it qua individuals.” Accordingly he so arranged what he called his “game” that each man, bringing with him that side of his head which belonged to the important land of his birth, was put in the way of getting another side to his head by men belonging to other not unimportant countries.
It is an asset towards prosperity, even for those whose lot will be cast altogether in one land, to get full and first-hand information about the men they will meet later. You know the formula better than I. The style of a man’s play, plus the normal range of his vices, divided by the square of his work, and multiplied by the coefficient of his nationality, gives, not only his potential resistance under breaking-strain, but indicates, within a few points, how far he may be trusted to pull off a losing game. This knowledge can only be acquired in the merciless intimacy of one’s early days. After that, one has to guess at the worth of one’s friends or enemies; but youth, which, between ourselves, sometimes knows almost as much about some things as it thinks it always does about everything, can apply its own tests on its own proving-grounds, and does not forget the results.
Rhodes and Jameson, for example, did not draw together impersonally over the abstract idea of Imperial service. They had tried each other out long before, across the poker-tables of the Kimberley Club, beside the death-beds of friends, and among the sudden and desperate emergencies of life on the Diamond Fields. So when their work began, neither had to waste time in reading up the other’s references. They simply fell into step side by side, and there remained till death parted them.
May something like their experience be yours with your friends here and throughout all your world. For you are exploring and assaying the minds of countries as well as of men. You have had samples of all the English-speaking teams to play with and against at leisure, in a cool grey atmosphere which gives full value to all attitudes — even to the attitude of the youngest and most rampant reformer who comes up fresh and fresher each year. When the scholarships were first created, one was afraid that Mr. Rhodes’s large and even-handed mixing up of unrelated opposites might infect weaker souls with the middle-aged failings of toleration, impartiality, or broadmindedness. And you know, gentlemen, that when these symptoms break out on a young man, it is a sure sign of early death or — of a leaning towards unpractical politics. Fortunately, what one has seen and heard since then proves that one’s fears were groundless.
There is a certain night, among several, that I remember, not long after the close of the War, when a man from Melbourne and a man from Montreal set themselves to show a couple of men from the South and Middle West that the Constitution of the United States was not more than 150 years out of date. At the same time, and in the same diggings, a man from California was explaining to a man from the Cape, with the help of some small hard apples, that no South African fruit was fit to be sold in the same market with the Californian product. The ring was kept by an ex-private of Balliol who, having eaten plum-and-apple jam in the trenches for some years, was a bigoted anti-fruitarian. He assured me that none of the disputants would be allowed to kill each other, because they were all wanted whole on the river next day; but even with murder barred, there was no trace of toleration till exhaustion set in. Then somebody made a remark which (I have had to edit it a little) ran substantially as follows: “Talking of natural resources, doesn’t it strike you that what we’ve all got most of is howling provincialism?” That would have delighted Rhodes. It was just the sort of thing he himself would have jerked out, half aloud, at a Cabinet meeting, and expanded for minutes afterwards. There must be other phrases also, perhaps even more direct, which have equally emerged from the peace and quiet of such gatherings as the one which I attended. If that be so, you might do worse than use them at a pinch, later on, as passwords among your associates throughout the world.
I suggest this because, whe
n you move up into the line, and the Gods who sell all things at a price are dealing you your places and your powers, you may find it serviceable, for ends outside yourself, to remind a friend on the far side of the world of some absurd situation or trivial event which parallels the crisis or the question then under your hands. And that man, in his station, remembering when and how the phrase was born, may respond to all that it implies — also for ends not his own. None can foresee on what grounds, national or international, some of you here may have to make or honour such an appeal; whether it will be for tangible help in vast material ventures, or for aid in things unseen; whether for a little sorely needed suspension of judgement in the councils of a nation as self-engrossed as your own; or, more searching still, for orderly farewells to be taken at some enforced parting of the ways. Any one of these issues may sweep to you across earth in the future. It will be yours to meet it with sanity, humour, and the sound heart that goes with a sense of proportion and the memory of good days shared together.
For you will be delivered to life in a world where, at the worst, no horror is now incredible, no folly unthinkable, no adventure inconceivable. At the best, you will have to deal and be dealt with by communities impatient of Nature, idolatrous of mechanisms, and sick of self-love to the point, almost, of doubting their own perfections. The Gods, whom they lecture, alone know what these folk will do or think. And here, gentlemen, let me put before you the seductive possibility that some of you may end your days in refuges for the mentally afflicted — not because you will necessarily be more insane than you are at present, but because you will have preached democracy to democracies resolute that never again shall their peace be troubled by Demos. Yet, out of all this welter, you will arrive at prosperity, as youth, armour-plated by its own absorption in itself, has always arrived. In truth, there is but one means by which you can miss it, and that is, if you try to get the better of the Gods who sell everything at a price. They continue to be just Gods, and should you hold back even a fraction of the sum asked for your heart’s desire, they will say nothing, but they will furnish you with a substitute that would deceive the elect — that will deceive even you until it is too late. So, I would advise you to pay them in full; making a note that goods obtained for personal use cost rather more than those intended for the honour and advancement of others.
My apology for mentioning these sordid bonds is that I saw the man in whose dream you move, pay the price which the Gods demanded of him, for his heart’s desire. And now I see some portion of his reward. It is your prosperity.
* * *
Shipping
I BELIEVE it is not an offence, under the Use and Custom of the Sea, for shippers to offer a steamer more freight than she can carry: but, if the steamer accepts, and overloads accordingly, it is an offence for which the steamer is responsible. But I never realised what a responsibility this was till I accepted your invitation to speak to the toast that stands in my name to-night.
This may be a confession of weakness, but it is a lucky man, not to say ship, that has only one weakness; and among my many weaknesses has been an early, acute, and abiding interest in the Mercantile Marine. I have seen its work. I have watched some of its performances from various craft, including gilt-edged liners, where every effort is made to persuade passengers that they are not at sea, but in a much safer place. I am unworthy of those efforts. For when I embark on such a vessel I know I have only to leave the Tudor grill-room, take the electric lift upstairs, and look out of the window of the more or less Perpendicular library on the top floor, and I shall see that same old grey wolf, the Ocean that harried our forefathers, waiting outside. It is not for me to teach you your business, but believe me, gentlemen, a ship is a ship, and you cannot get away from it.
In the same way this island of ours is a ship, as much as H.M.S. Ascension, with the additional disadvantage of being moored between two Continents, so that we can enjoy the weather, political and otherwise, from both. Furthermore, H.M.S. Great Britain carries a passenger list, including stowaways, of forty-five millions, and, owing to peculiarities of her construction, there are never more than six weeks’ supplies of consumable stores aboard her at one time. The balance must come by ship, and if the shipping does not come, a fortnight would deliver us to panic indescribable, and three months would see us embarked on the gallant adventure of cannibalism. These are the facts which underlie the camouflage of our existence on H.M.S. Great Britain. Naturally, they do not trouble the passengers aboard her, any more than the sight of the sea worries the passengers on your floating palaces.
But once in a while something happens at sea to remind us that a ship can be lost in a few hours. And, on land, we have seen all the Russias — one-sixth of the land-area of the globe — drive under in a few years.
Now, ships are lost for all sorts of reasons, some of which may even appear in the Admiralty Court depositions, but when a nation is lost the underlying cause of the collapse is always that she cannot handle her transport. Everything in life, from marriage to manslaughter, turns on the speed and cost at which men, things, and thoughts can be shifted from one place to another. If you can tie up a nation’s transport you can take her off your books.
We have suffered from one scientific attempt to prove this, which very nearly succeeded. For the moment, however, there is a lull in the wars fought with visible weapons. We are deep now in that world-war which aims to destroy the spirit and will of man in his home and at his work. One sound man whose morale can be gassed and gangrened in time of peace till he condones and helps to create every form of confusion that will ruin himself and his neighbour, is doing his country infinitely more harm than a thousand casualties on the battlefield. It is cheaper to induce your enemy to cut his own throat for what you have persuaded him are lofty motives than to do it for him against his will. And this is the essence of the New Model War — to create ill-will, which is the mother of despair, and through that ill-will to exploit the damnable streak in each of us which leads us to stop our own work and talk about the duties of others. The rest follows by itself.
The aftermath of the war, which still hangs round us like mustard-gas, helps this attack. For if you have driven a densely crowded, highly civilised population through the whole cycle of primitive emotions, they are bound to come out of it shaken to the core of their souls; and in that state they are as open to moral and mental infection as a tired man is to influenza. So we have, now, H.M.S. Great Britain crowded to the rails with passengers — some of them storm-sick, many of them ship-stale — who get in each other’s light at every turn, and spend their time telling each other how the ship ought to be run.
To argue with them is useless. It only sends up their temperatures. Our sane attitude towards each other must be that of good-will — a good-will just a little more persistent, just a little more indefatigable than the ill-will which is being fabricated elsewhere. For if good-will can once more be made normal, with it must return that will to work which is the trade-mark of established health in a people. If the will to work be too long delayed, then, all that our race has made or stands for must pass into the hand of whatever nation first recovers that will.
Our recovery has been held back by the propaganda of ill-will and despair that is meant to wreck all effort at its source. But, do you think the engines of H.M.S. Great Britain can be adapted to burn this kind of fuel? I don’t. Our lives for the past few years may have done for some of us what Government Control of trade in the war did for some big firms — knocked us off taking risks in the open market on small margins. There is no denying that a good many men have ceased to “quote fine”. But the old individual instincts in us are not smothered. At heart we are all gamblers born, and the odds in favour of self-chosen, decontrolled lives are more and more worth taking. For men have grown a little tired of being told off to hate their neighbours by numbers, at the word of command. This reaction may or may not mark a turn of the tide, but, at least, it gives a time of slack-water, during which H.M.S. G
reat Britain may begin to get under way again and work up to the higher pressures.
And think of the stakes! Think, too, with what an astounding equipment we are now able to play for them. By comparison it was only yesterday that, when a ship was once under the horizon, she passed beyond help or call for, perhaps, half a year. To-day a tramp cannot report a cockroach-leg in a slide-valve without half the North Atlantic coming to her help. Months have been cut down to weeks, and weeks to days in the transport of men and things; and, unless all signs fail, we are on the edge of further unbelievable cuts in time. The transport of thought, which carries with it man’s most intimate associations, has outstripped, not only belief, but the speed of thought itself. Even now, it is an accepted diversion for men and women half across the world to listen to Big Ben strike in London. Before long, any man in any quarter of the Empire will be able to call for and be answered by the voice of his own birthplace at its work or play. Everywhere time and space are coming to heel round us to fetch and carry for our behoof, in the wilderness or the market. And that means that it will be possible for us now, as never before, to fuse our Empire together in thought and understanding as closely as in the interchange of men and things.
And it was the Shipping Industry which, from the first, sought out, found, built up, and bound together the entire fabric of what is now our Empire. This it did at hazard, unsupported, in hope of trade, or led by some dream of new roads across new seas. The Shipping Industry is the mother of the Old Navy as it is the sister of the New; in sober. daily fact, the mainstay of our prosperity and our very lives, and in Law, I believe, “a common carrier.” What burden it bears now, what heavier burden the future may lay upon it, you who inherit its present direction know better than the careless world you serve. We see only that there has never been any malice of wind or weather, or of the King’s many enemies, or of the turn of the markets in a thousand years, that the Shipping Industry has not met and ridden out.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 962