a firm belief that expansion without a
proper sense of responsibility toward the governed was foolhardy. In
his "The Ballad of East and West," he salutes strong men whatever
their race.
Kipling was no saint: "He was never a democrat, he detested female
suffragism, he despised the very concept of mass education," notes
Orel. But his efforts to probe grief, the horrors of war, and the "irration-
ality of human existence" through fiction deserve the serious consid-
eration...