For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o’erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!
Though all we knew depart,
The old Commandments stand: —
“In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.”
Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old: —
“No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled.”
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.
Comfort, content, delight,
The ages’ slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,
Through perils and dismays
Renewed and re-renewed.
Though all we made depart,
The old Commandments stand: —
“In patience keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand.”
No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all —
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
This is excellent. There is definitely room for art here.
Of course, the Hun he speaks of are the German people, the war is the First World War. He was very gung-ho for that war, until he sent his son to the front, and never saw him again. He died just weeks after his 18th birthday.
Kipling was consumed with guilt. He had pulled strings to get his son into the army. He wrote in Epitaphs of the War
“If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied.”
The First World War was probably the most insane, devastating, and completely unnecessary war in European history.
“The Hun is at the gate!”
The Germans are not “Huns”. The actual Huns were led by Atillia the Hun who was Mongolian. The Government German officially complained about this in WW1. It was a WW1 propaganda term that appears to have stuck.
‘…No easy hope or lies, Shall bring us to our goal, But iron sacrifice…’
Yes, that was Kipling, ignorantly promoting the ‘easy hope and lies’ and the ‘iron sacrifice’ of Christian Europe on a cross of iron for THEIR goals.
‘Huns’ indeed. The real Huns were Asiatics who invaded Europe in the Dark Ages.
But something else really was ‘at the gate’, and also inside the gate, in England itself.
Sorry to be negative, but that may be the worst thing he ever wrote.
He got his wish. The “Hun” got beat, not once but twice. It didn’t save the English or freedom. This year marks the anniversary of 100 years of Western insanity.
Idk, HW—- it used to seem that way, but you can’t blame the English for wanting to stay English. We were told we “won” the world wars (and, of course, that there always needs to be a “third one” which we are told about from birth, as “naming brings things into being”); despite being told we “won” the wars, it meant the replacement of English populations throughout the entire world (the object of “de-colonization”). Those English and often dutch colonists, as in South Africa, are simply replaced by other neo-colonials.
Meantime, we are told that “fascism” is about “race,” when in reality, the fascist (real ones) began as strict Marxists and became leftist-corporatists (basically what the u.s. republican party is now). The subtext of all the “holocaust” movies is that “hitler was about race,” (not the reality of various economic systems). That’s how you can have a “right wing” (that is really a left wing, also).
Anyway, if I had ever been told about Kipling in school, probably I would have preferred to write a paper about him INSTEAD OF Leroy Jones or Nikki Giovanni, or taking all those classes in native American tribes and the intricacies of their weaving patterns.
If I had another “identity” under “identity politics”, probably this mass-re-education and thought reform into foreign cultures would have been tried in class action law suits for psychological damages and by now, I could own my own island and drink little drinks with umbrellas in them all day.
Hunter Wallace says:
January 8, 2014 at 10:05 am (Edit)
The First World War was probably the most insane, devastating, and completely unnecessary war in European history.
JR replies:
Yes you are very correct. And so many people recognized this horrible truth, many came to terrible, alternative politics, philosophies – embracing Communism, rejecting all forms of patriotism, military service, nationalism, rejecting all forms of Christianity, rejecting anything and everything that got England, Europe in to World War I.
With the United States, our participation and the outcome of World War I wasn’t as devastating , as supposedly we won and were make Europe and the entire world safe for American style “democracy”. When Russia went Communist and most of Europe fell in to depression, political turmoil, Americans retreated in to isolationism and dismissed all notions of future wars and international governments as crazy.
The key problem with Kipling’s call to arms to fight “the barbaric Huns” is that he was just flat out wrong. The Germans weren’t racially alien barbaric Huns. The Germans were our White kinsmen and the name “Germans” means “defenders” and the German tribes defended White Europe from Asiactic mongrel hordes especially “the Huns”.
If Kipling had been addressing real Huns line the Paki gangs now raping English girls in England he would have been right.
The Hun is at the gate!
Ironically, the name of the Federal judge who ordered urban-suburban school desegregation in St. Louis was named Hungate.
Actually, the English (or Anglo-Saxons) are Germanic tribes that came to England in the 5th century. The word “England” drives from Anglo-land
Here is something interesting …..
Freemasonry
According to the English magazine Masonic Illustrated, Kipling became a Freemason in about 1885, prior to the usual minimum age of 21.[55] He was initiated into Hope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782 in Lahore. He later wrote to The Times, “I was Secretary for some years of the Lodge . . . , which included Brethren of at least four creeds. I was entered [as an Apprentice] by a member from Brahmo Somaj, a Hindu, passed [to the degree of Fellow Craft] by a Mohammedan, and raised [to the degree of Master Mason] by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian Jew.” Kipling received not only the three degrees of Craft Masonry, but also the side degrees of Mark Master Mason and Royal Ark Mariner.[56]
Kipling so loved his masonic experience that he memorialised its ideals in his famous poem, “The Mother Lodge”,[57] and used the fraternity and its symbols as vital plot devices in his novella, The Man Who Would Be King.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling
At the beginning of World War I, like many other writers, Kipling wrote pamphlets and poems which enthusiastically supported the UK’s war aims of restoring Belgium after that kingdom had been occupied by Germany together with more generalised statements that Britain was standing up for the cause of good. In September 1914, Kipling was asked by the British government to write propaganda, an offer that he immediately accepted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling#The_First_World_War
Yes, that poem was tragically wrong in terms of the enemy it envisioned. Nevertheless, we might recycle it for inspiration against the genuine “Huns” we face today.
“With the United States, our participation and the outcome of World War I wasn’t as devastating”
In point of fact man for man during the time of our combat there Americans incurred casualty rates just as awful as the Germans, French, and English had sustained during the previous 3 years.
Also WWII was a direct result of our involvement in WWI. Had we not intervened the exhausted combatants would have reached a peace agreement by themselves that certainly would NOT have resulted in the punitive conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. I blame the lying Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson, who ran for re-election on a platform that promised to keep us out of the war while secretly violating our neutrality by running guns to the English in ships like the Lusitania and conjuring up anti-German conspiracies such as the bogus Zimmerman Letter.
One of my favorite Kipling poems:
THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
“This destiny does not tire, nor can it be broken, and its mantle of
strength descends upon those in its service.” – Francis Parker Yockey,
IMPERIUM