reviews/enemy-at-the-gates-20010315

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15019

Enemy at the Gates. Paramount Pictures.

Reviewed by David R. Stone

Published on H-War (June, 2002)

"Therein lies the problem. While a compelling writer with an eye for detail, Craig is not particularly skeptical of his sources. In his account of the sniper duel, Craig takes Stalinist propaganda at face value. "

There is nothing wrong with setting a fictional story against an historical backdrop; to claim it as true is another matter. In this case, the sniper duel only adds to the plot's contrived elements: Zaitsev and Chernova's chance encounter on a train to Stalingrad, or Chernova's decision to become a sniper instead of a radio operator. She returns to the front lines after she personally happens to intercept a German transmission providing excruciating detail on the death of her parents as part of a mass execution of a trainload of deported Jews.

One irritating aspect of the film, as the above incident displays, is its reliance on cliche. Cliches do have the virtue of not being strictly inaccurate--after all, cliches require an element of truth to become cliches. Still, they suggest a certain laziness of presentation. This would include the balalaikas that the Soviet soldiers faithfully break out at quiet moments, and Khrushchev's behest to a failed officer to kill himself to avert execution. It extends to the opening sequence of Zaitsev's introduction to Stalingrad, where panicking soldiers are immediately shot, troops are ordered into obviously suicidal attacks and machine-gunned when they fall back, and due to lack of rifles half the troops are ordered to seize up weapons from their fallen comrades (much more typical of the Russian experience in World War I, not World War II). While these certainly happened on the Eastern Front, their juxtaposition seems forced and unoriginal. While cliches may irritate, they are not the same as actual errors in presentation, which Enemy at the Gates suffers from in significant numbers. 

More serious are the errors that would lead to serious misunderstandings of the battle and its context. They are many. Most significant is the picture the film gives of what truly mattered at Stalingrad, and what the battle was like. First, it presents a picture of Stalingrad as a sniper's battle. While snipers were certainly significant, this ignores the more important lessons of Stalingrad: the terrible overextension of German manpower and material resources required by Hitler's drive on the Caucasus oil fields, the astonishing endurance of individual Soviet soldiers, and the steadily increasing abilities of the Soviet high command, which was able to plan and organize an astoundingly successful counteroffensive to trap Paulus's Sixth Army in the city. 
The fact that hundreds of thousands of German and Soviet soldiers were dying in the crowded ruins of Stalingrad, with the front lines often separated by a hallway or alley, is a fact that makes only intermittent appearances--it would detract from the utterly personal and contextless nature of the sniper duel. 
There are other historical problems as well. Ron Perlman's exceedingly grizzled veteran sniper Kulikov tells a chronologically muddled story of his training at a German sniper school (presumably as part of the pre-1933 collaboration) while Hitler and Stalin strolled arm in arm (not literally, we presume, but figuratively only after 1939). Upon the outbreak of war (in 1941), he was then arrested and beaten to force him to confess he was a German spy (typical of 1937). Thanks to this, he has a mouthful of steel teeth. This last at least is based on some reality: future Marshal Konstantin Rokossovskii lost numerous teeth before getting out of the NKVD's clutches. The Soviet high command is seriously distorted.While Chuikov or Vasilevskii never make an appearance, this is excusable: no film can possibly show every aspect of a battle, or all the personalities involved. What is inexcusable is the impression created that the Stalingrad campaign was run by Nikita Khrushchev. Bob Hoskins does quite well at portraying Khrushchev in all his warty peasant earthiness, but Khrushchev was simply not the essential figure that the film portrays him as being. Finally, at the film's climax, Danilov sacrifices himself in despair over his loss of faith in Marxism-Leninism. This is not because he has decided that human interests outweigh class interests, or that the theory of surplus value is nonsense, but because sexual jealousy will make an egalitarian society impossible.
__This does not, I find, ring especially true when coming from a zealous young Stalinist. To end on a brighter note, Enemy at the Gates has at the very least boosted the number of my students who drop by the office to ask questions about Stalingrad. I only wish it had done a better job of giving them good answers._

_______________________________________________________________________________

First things first. The film Enemy at the Gates is a good thing for the study of the Eastern Front during World War II. If even one in one hundred of those who see the film is inspired to pick up William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates or any other book on the war in the east, then director and co-writer Jean-Jacques Annaud has done a great service to those who research and teach Soviet history. If it helps even a little to bring the scale and importance of the Soviet-German clash home to Western audiences, the film will right a great historical wrong: the terrible ignorance within the Western public of how central the Eastern Front was to the outcome of World War II. That said, I found Enemy at the Gates terribly disappointing. As both entertainment and a historical portrayal of the Battle of Stalingrad, the film fell far short of its potential. After beginning with a visually spectacular sequence depicting young Soviet soldier Vassili [sic] Zaitsev's arrival in Stalingrad, the remainder of the film never lives up to the level promised by its opening. This especially hurts because the elements to make a profoundly interesting film were certainly present. The battle of Stalingrad offers all the human drama and pathos one could ask. The filmmakers spared no expense in sets and effects to recreate the look of a devastated Stalingrad, down to Russian-language obscenities scrawled on the walls.

 The cast is top-notch: Jude Law is remarkably good as Zaitsev; Rachel Weisz and Joseph Fiennes do the best they can with underwritten parts as sniper Tania Chernova and political officer Danilov. Bob Hoskins is superb as a profane and warty Nikita Khrushchev; likewise Ed Harris as the German master sniper Konig. Despite all this, the film wastes these resources in an attempt to recreate the strategy that James Cameron employed in Titanic: given an historical moment of great emotional resonance, focus instead on a love triangle worthy of teenagers and presumably aimed at appealing to teenagers. 

 The plot follows Zaitsev as he arrives in Stalingrad as a naive and innocent soldier, only to be immediately plunged into the horrors of battle. In a fortuitous encounter, Zaitsev demonstrates his exceptional marksmanship by picking off five Germans in front of Danilov. Danilov then turns Zaitsev into a sniper-hero to inspire the Soviet soldiers at Stalingrad. They both encounter Tania Chernova, a beautiful young intellectual turned soldier, and compete for her love with heroism and gifts of sturgeon. As Zaitsev's renown and kills grow, the German army calls in Konig, their top sniper, to hunt him down. Strictly as entertainment, I found the film remarkably slow-moving. Others may appreciate the deliberate pace. More serious, from my point of view, were the historical inaccuracies and oversights that mar the film. William Craig's Enemy at the Gates (New York, 1973) provides the basic elements of the plot, and the main characters appear in it: Zaitsev, Chernova, Danilov, even the young boy spy Sacha Fillipov [sic]. Therein lies the problem. While a compelling writer with an eye for detail, Craig is not particularly skeptical of his sources. In his account of the sniper duel, Craig takes Stalinist propaganda at face value. There is no source outside of Soviet propaganda for even the existence of the German supersniper (Konings in Craig's book; Thorwald in others). Craig took the propaganda built up around Zaitsev's 242 kills as a sniper and presented it as truth, from where it made its way onto the screen as an ostensibly true story. There is nothing wrong with setting a fictional story against an historical backdrop; to claim it as true is another matter. In this case, the sniper duel only adds to the plot's contrived elements: Zaitsev and Chernova's chance encounter on a train to Stalingrad, or Chernova's decision to become a sniper instead of a radio operator. She returns to the front lines after she personally happens to intercept a German transmission providing excruciating detail on the death of her parents as part of a mass execution of a trainload of deported Jews. One irritating aspect of the film, as the above incident displays, is its reliance on cliche. Cliches do have the virtue of not being strictly inaccurate--after all, cliches require an element of truth to become cliches. Still, they suggest a certain laziness of presentation.This would include the balalaikas that the Soviet soldiers faithfully break out at quiet moments, and Khrushchev's behest to a failed officer to kill himself to avert execution. It extends to the opening sequence of Zaitsev's introduction to Stalingrad, where panicking soldiers are immediately shot, troops are ordered into obviously suicidal attacks and machine-gunned when they fall back, and due to lack of rifles half the troops are ordered to seize up weapons from their fallen comrades (much more typical of the Russian experience in World War I, not World War II). While these certainly happened on the Eastern Front, their juxtaposition seems forced and unoriginal. While cliches may irritate, they are not the same as actual errors in presentation, which Enemy at the Gates suffers from in significant numbers. Quite often, errors in small particulars that grate on those in the know are utterly irrelevant to what the general public will take away from the film. While these mistakes call into question the filmmakers' credibility, historians must accept that no one will come away with a faulty understanding of Stalingrad because Nikita Khrushchev's name is misspelled in the end credits. There are other problems of this type: the commissar Danilov tells Zaitsev that the Soviet people are reading about him "in the Crimea"; the Germans had completely occupied the Crimea by July 1942, well before the events of the film. Zaitsev also hears of Danilov's promotion to the General Staff--an odd career move for a junior political officer still at the front. Graduate students more knowledgeable than I in these fields tell me that German aircraft bear Western Front markings, not Eastern Front, and that Zaitsev's particular telescopic scope is anachronistic. There are certainly more. Again, those errors are irritating to those who catch them, but minor to any broad audience. More serious are the errors that would lead to serious misunderstandings of the battle and its context. 

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/enemy-at-the-gates-20010315

Many German critics shat all over this $80 million epic when it opened at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The chief complaint about this lavish depiction of the German invasion of Russia during the pivotal World War II battle of Stalingrad (1942 to 1943) is that the movie had gone Hollywood. Financed with German money, Enemy nonetheless stars American Ed Harris as Major Konig, the Nazi sharpshooter, and British Jude Law as Vassili Zaitsev, the real-life Russian sniper who tries to bring Konig down. Worse, the core of the movie involves Vassili's romantic rivalry with his political-officer friend Danilov (British Joseph Fiennes) over the affections of Tania (Rachel Weisz, another Brit), the Jewish soldier who truly loves Vassili. Accounts vary over who really loved whom, and William Craig's nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates only inspired the script by Alain Godard and director Jean-Jacques Annaud, both French. It's not a strict adaptation, so things get made up.
Still, despite the flak about romantic cliches and miscast actors, Annaud's film boasts harrowing battle scenes as Russian relief troops are bombarded while crossing the River Volga, and Stalingrad itself is battered by air and sea while tanks and soldiers overrun its streets. In the shell of the city, Vassili and Konig face off in a duel of wits that is meant to mirror the larger battle. Any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life.

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Main cast[edit]

• Jude Law – Vasily Zaytsev
• Joseph Fiennes – Commisar Danilov
• Rachel Weisz – Tania Chernova
• Bob Hoskins – Nikita Khrushchev
• Ed Harris – Major Erwin König
• Ron Perlman – Kulikov
• Eva Mattes – Mother Filippova
• Gabriel Thomson – Sasha Filippov
• Matthias Habich – General Friedrich Paulus
• Sophie Rois – Ludmilla
• Ivan Shvedoff – Volodya
• Mario Bandi – Anton
• Gennadi Vengerov – Starshina
• Mikhail Matveyev – Grandfather

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/enemy-at-the-gates-2001

"Enemy at the Gates" opens with a battle sequence that deserves comparison with "Saving Private Ryan," and then narrows its focus until it is about two men playing a cat-and-mouse game in the ruins of Stalingrad. The Nazi is sure he is the cat. The Russian fears he may be the mouse.

The movie is inspired by true events, we're told, although I doubt real life involved a love triangle; the film might have been better and leaner if it had told the story of the two soldiers and left out the soppy stuff. Even so, it's remarkable, a war story told as a chess game where the loser not only dies, but goes by necessity to an unmarked grave.

This is a rare World War II movie that does not involve Americans. It takes place in the autumn of 1942, in Stalingrad, during Hitler's insane attack on the Soviet Union. At first it appeared the Germans would roll over the ragged Russian resistance, but eventually the stubbornness of the Soviets combined with the brutal weather and problems with supply lines to deliver Hitler a crushing defeat and, many believe, turn the tide of the war.

We see the early hopelessness of the Soviet cause in shots showing terrified Russian soldiers trying to cross a river and make a landing in the face of withering fire. They are ordered to charge the Germans across an exposed no-man's land, and when half are killed and the others turned back, they are fired on as cowards by their own officers. This is a sustained sequence as harrowing, in its way, as Steven Spielberg's work.

One of the Russians stands out. His name is Vassili (Jude Law), and we know from the title sequence that he is a shepherd from the Urals, whose marksmanship was learned by killing wolves that preyed on his flock. In the heat of battle, he kills five Germans, and is noticed by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the political officer assigned to his unit. As Russian morale sinks lower, Danilov prints a leaflet praising the heroic shepherd boy.

We learn that Vassili is indeed a good shot, but has little confidence in his own abilities (in the opening sequence, he has one bullet to use against a wolf, and misses). Danilov encourages him, and as the battle lines solidify and both sides dig into their positions, Vassili continues to pick off Germans and star in Danilov's propaganda. Even Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins, looking uncannily like the real thing), the leader of the Soviet defense of Stalingrad, praises the boy, and the publicity strategy.

As German resolve falters, they bring in their own best sniper, a sharpshooter named Konig (Ed Harris), a Bavarian aristocrat who in peacetime shoots deer. He is older, hawk-faced, clear-eyed, a professional. His assignment is to kill Vassili and end the propaganda. "How will you find him?" he's asked. "I'll have him find me." The heart of the movie is the duel between the two men, played out in a blasted cityscape of bombed factories and rubble. The war recedes into the background as the two men, who have never had a clear glimpse of each other, tacitly agree on their ground of battle. The director, Jean-Jacques Annaud, makes the geography clear--the open spaces, the shadows, the hollow pipes that are a way to creep from one point to another.

The duel is made more complicated when Vassili meets Sacha (Gabriel Marshall-Thomson), a boy of 7 or 8 who moves like a wraith between the opposing lines and is known to both snipers. Through Sacha, Vassili meets his neighbor Tanya (Rachel Weisz), a Jewish woman whose parents were killed by the Nazis. Vassili falls in love with Tanya--and so does Danilov, and this triangle seems like a plot device to separate the scenes that really interest us.

Sacha serves as a useful character, however. As a child of war, he is old beyond his years, but not old enough to know how truly ruthless and deadly a game he is involved in. His final appearance in the film brings a gasp from the audience, but fits into the implacable logic of the situation.

Annaud ("Quest for Fire," "In the Name of the Rose," "Seven Years in Tibet") makes big-scale films where men test themselves against their ideas. Here he shows the Nazi sniper as a cool professional, almost without emotion, taking a cerebral approach to the challenge. The Russian is quite different; his confidence falters when he learns who he's up against, and he says, simply, "He's better than me." The strategy of the final confrontation between the two men has a kind of poetry to it, and I like the physical choices that Harris makes in the closing scene.

Is the film also about a duel between two opposing ideologies, Marxism and Nazism? Danilov, the propagandist, paints it that way, but actually it is about two men placed in a situation where they have to try to use their intelligence and skills to kill each other. When Annaud focuses on that, the movie works with rare concentration. The additional plot stuff and the romance are kind of a shame.

Reception[edit]

Based on 137 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 54% approval rating from critics, with an average score of 5.7/10; the reviews were summarized as "Atmospheric and thrilling, Enemy at the Gates gets the look and feel of war right. However, the love story seems out of place."^[5] Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating in the 0–100 range based on reviews from top mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 53, based on 33 reviews.^[6]

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that it "is about two men placed in a situation where they have to try to use their intelligence and skills to kill each other. When Annaud focuses on that, the movie works with rare concentration. The additional plot stuff and the romance are kind of a shame".^[7] New York Magazine's Peter Ranier was less kind, declaring "It's as if an obsessed film nut had decided to collect every bad war-film convention on one computer and program it to spit out a script."^[8]Peter Travers of Rolling Stone admitted the film had faults, but that "any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life."^[9]

The film was poorly received in the former Soviet Union.^[10] Some Red Army Stalingrad veterans were so offended by inaccuracies in the film and how the Red Army was portrayed that on 7 May 2001, shortly after the film premiered in Russia, they expressed their displeasure in the Duma, demanding a ban of the film, but their request was not granted.^[11][12]

The film was received poorly in Germany. Critics claimed that it simplified history and glorified war.^[13][14][15] At the Berlinale film festival, it was booed. Annaud stated afterwards that he would not present another film at Berlinale, calling it a "slaughterhouse" and claiming that his film received much better reception elsewhere.^[16][17]

Historical accuracy[edit]

Zaytsev was a senior sergeant of the 2nd Battalion, 1047th Rifle Regiment, 284th Tomsk Rifle Division. He was interviewed by Vasily Grossman during the battle, and the account of that interview, lightly fictionalized in his novel, Life and Fate (Part One, Chapter 55), is substantially the same as that shown in the movie, without putting a name to the German sniper with whom he dueled.

Historian Antony Beevor suggests in his book Stalingrad that, while Zaytsev was a real person, the story of his duel (dramatised in the film) with König is fictional. Although William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad includes a "sniper's duel" between Zaytsev and König, the sequence of events in the film is fictional. Zaytsev, in an interview claimed to have engaged in a sniper duel over a number of days. Zaytsev, the only historical source for the story, stated that after killing the German sniper, and on collecting his tags, he found that he had killed the head of the Berlin Sniper School.^[4] No sniper named König has ever been identified in the German records.

In the film, Jude Law uses a 7.62x54r Mosin Model 1891/30 sniper rifle with a PU 3.5 power sniper scope (i.e. the image is magnified 3 and a half times). Vasily Zaytsev used a Model 1891/30 sniper rifle with an earlier and larger sniper telescope (his rifle is preserved in a museum in Russia). Also, the poster for the film reverses the Mosin 91/30 rifle photograph so that the bolt handle appears on the left side of the rifle, instead of the right side where it should be.

The love story between Vasily and Tania has no basis in Zaytsev's memoirs.

KIPLING AN UNDEFENDED ISLAND ON WAR

A Book of Words Rudyard Kipling XXXVII An Undefended Island  The Royal Society of St George Connaught Rooms, 6 May 1935 I AM UNFORTUNATELY a producer of fiction; but outside office-hours, I plead guilty to an interest in facts. Will you allow me just to run through a few facts which may be of interest to our England of to-day? First, let it be granted that when men are dead, they cease to live, and, as Solomon says, 'neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.' Great Britain's quota of dead in the War was over eight hundred thousand when the books were closed in '21 or '22. It would be within the mark to say that three-quarters of a million of these were English. Furthermore, a large but unknown number died in the next few years from wounds or disease directly due to the War. There is a third category of men—incapacitated from effort by the effects of shock, gassing, tubercle, and the like. These carry a high death-rate because many of them burned out half a life's vitality in three or four years. They, too, have ceased to count. All these were men of average physique, and, but that they died without issue, would have continued our race. The selective elimination of so many men of one type, and their replacement by so many persons of another type and their children, led to an extensive revision of all standards of English thought and action. Now, there were a number of persons who, for various motives, had dissociated themselves from the War at the outset. These, however, were all able to answer to their names at the close of hostilities and to rejoin the national life with a clear field before them. Still they were not happy. There is a necessity laid upon man to justify himself to himself in order that he may continue to live comfortably with himself. Our initial errors, as we all know, are trivial. It is what we say and do to prove to ourselves that our errors were really laborious virtues which builds up the whole-time hells of this life. So it was in exact accord with human nature that, very shortly after the War, a theory should have sprung up that the War had been due to a sort of cosmic hallucination which had infected the nations concerned with a sort of cosmic hysteria. This theory absolved those who had not interested themselves in the War and, by inference, condemned those who had; thus supplying comfort and moral support where needed. Naturally, the notion bore fruit. For this reason. Most children and all nations, when they have hurt themselves, instinctively run indoors and ask to be told a pretty tale. So it was with us, and so to us, too, a tale was told. (You may remember we were all a little fatigued at the time.) The special virtue of our tale was that its moral bases were as inexpugnable as the most upright preceptress could desire. Here they are:— All pain—whether it come from hitting one's head against a table or from improvising a four years' war at four days' notice—is evil. All evil is wicked. And since, of all evils, war gives the most pain to the most people, wickedest of all things is war. Wherefore, unless people wish to be thought wicked, they must so order the national life that never again shall war in any form be possible. Granted the first premiss, the rest of the reasoning is unanswerable—on paper. But why the entire commination-service should have been addressed by ourselves to ourselves is a little obscure. For if ever there was a converted nation since the days of Saint Augustine, it was us. A little later—in '22 or '23—on the heels, you might say, of Rachel mourning for her children—our electorate was enlarged by the enfranchisement of all Englishwomen over twenty-one. This gave renewed impetus to our national ideal of an ever-rising standard of living and the removal of want, discomfort, and the accidents of life from the lives of all our people. To this end we built up, and are now building, gigantic organisations to control and handle every detail of those lives. But for reasons which I shall try to show we chose—we chose—not to provide that reasonable margin of external safety without which even the lowest standard of life cannot be maintained in this dangerously congested island. The world outside England had other preoccupations. Like ourselves, it had dealt—had been compelled to deal—with an opponent whose national life and ideals were based on a cult—a religion, as it now appears—of war, which exacted that all his nationals should be trained at any cost to endure as well as to inflict punishment. In this our opponent was excusable. He had won his place in civilisation by means of three well-planned wars waged within two generations. He had been checked somewhat in his fourth war, but soon after the close of it—in '24 or '25—seemed to be preparing for a fifth campaign. In this, also, our opponent was excusable. His path was made easy for him. Stride for stride with his progress towards his avowed goal, we toiled,--as men toil after virtue, to cast away a half, and more than a half, of our defences in all three elements and to limit the sources of their supply and renewal. This we did explicitly that we might set the rest of the world a good example. That the rest of the world—down to little uneasy neutrals who had seen what can happen to a neutral at a pinch—was openly or furtively trying to arm itself against whispered eventualities had nothing to do with our case. It was laid upon us to set the world an example, no matter at what risks. And we did. For several years—more than ten, I believe—our responsible administrators dwelt, almost with complacency, on the magnitude of the risks we were running, and on our righteousness in running them, and through all those years our people were made to appear as if they loved to have it so. But through all those irrecoverable years a large part of the world outside England had not been idle. Today, State-controlled murder and torture, open and secret, within and outside the borders of a State; State-engineered famine, starvation and slavery as requisite; State-imposed godlessness, or State-prescribed paganism; are commonplaces of domestic administration throughout States whose aggregate area is between one-fifth and one-fourth of the total land-surface of the Eastern hemisphere. These modern developments have been accepted in England without noticeable protest even from quarters usually quick to protest. Nevertheless, the past year or so has given birth to the idea that our example of State-defended defencelessness has not borne much fruit, and that we have walked far enough along the road which is paved with good intentions. It is now arranged that, in due time, we will take steps to remedy our more obvious deficiencies. So far, good; but if that time be not given to us—if the attack of the future is to be on the same swift 'all-in' lines as our opponents' domestic administrations—it is possible that, before we are aware, our country may have joined those submerged races of history who passed their children through fire to Moloch in order to win credit with their Gods. And yet, the genius of our race fights for us in the teeth of doctrine ! The abiding springs of the English spirit are not of yesterday or the day before. They draw from the immemorial continuity of the nation's life under its own Sovereigns. They are fed by a human relationship more intimate and more far-reaching than any the world has ever known. They make part of a mystery as unpurchasable as it is incommunicable. One has but to look back over the last century of our past to realise how that Royal relationship set itself—through Mother, Son, and Grandson—to consolidate and prepare for our future and to meet the hazards of our present. Three generations of our Ruling House have accepted whatever burden of responsibility, whatever merciless demand for effort, whatever of personal risk, the honour or the needs of their people laid upon them. Each generation in turn has bowed the neck to unbroken sacrifice, devotion, and patience. These things are assuredly not exhibited for the sake of example only. But they have come, by cumulative weight of virtue and toil, to create, to stiffen, and to inspire, the whole taken-for-granted fabric of sane and silent discharge of duty—both in the island and throughout our Empire—on which our destiny depends. That—behind and beyond all—is our strength and hope. It is in that hope that I ask you to drink to England and the English.

A Book of Words Selections from speeches and addresses delivered between 1906 and 1927 This is one of the six later speeches not included in that collection which were added for the Sussex Edition XXXVII"An Undefended Island"  The Royal Society of St George Connaught Rooms, 6 May 1935 Notes edited by Leonee Ormond  Introduction   The speech   Notes on XXXVI   [April 11th 2011] Publication Published in The Times, 7 May 1935, p. 9, reprinted in Vital Speeches of the Day, I, no 17, 20 May 1935; Nineteenth Century, June 1935; The English Race, August 1935 and National Review, September 1936. It was collected in theSussex Edition vol. XXV, pp. 321-28, together with the earlier speeches collected in A Book of Words, and in theBurwash Edition vol. XXIV. Background Hitler and the Nazis had come to power in Germany in 1933, and had made it clear that they planned to re-arm and restore the greatness of the German Empire after the defeat of 1918. This was a continuing source of concern to Kipling, who recalled the horrors of the Great War, in which he had lost his only son. There had been some 3.2 million British casualties, including over 900,000 dead. He had little faith in collective security through the League of Nations, or in the appeasement of Hitler, and believed that it was essential for Britain to look to her defences. See also "The Bonfires" (1933), and "The Pleasure Cruise", of the same year. This speech, given on the day of George V’s Silver Jubilee (marking twenty-five years on the throne), was published in the newspapers, broadcast and recorded. Lord Queenborough (1861-1949) was in the Chair, and Kipling, as principal speaker, proposed a toast to 'England and the English'. Caroline Kipling reported that ‘Rud does his speech. He speaks firmly and in good form’. [Letters (Ed. Thomas Pinney) vol 6. p. 351] Kipling explained to his daughter that: All sorts of letters, wires and cables coming in still – One from a Methodist clergyman much grieved and shocked and pained and demanding of me and the world generally, whether a little “self-sacrifice” couldn’t appease the Boche!  [13 May Letters (Ed. Thomas Pinney) vol 6. p. 351] Writing to Sir Percy Bates, the Chairman of the Morning Post and of Cunard, Kipling reported that he had received ‘literally, hundreds of letters and lots of wires, and, oddly enough, cables from rather important people in the Dominions’. [14 May, Letters (Ed. Thomas Pinney) vol 6. p. 353] Kipling had already told Sir Percy on 9 May that many ‘want the thing distributed as a leaflet – or tract. What d’you think?’ [14 May, Letters (Ed. Thomas Pinney) vol 6. p. 354] Now he assured him: No. I wasn’t thinking of the M.P. [Morning Post] as a distributor of my speech. That ‘ud be only dealing with the converted: and I don’t think, for a minute, that the League of Nations Union ‘ud touch it with a barge-pole. [Letters (Ed. Thomas Pinney) vol 6. p. 353] In his speech Kipling argued that England had lost many men in the Great War, some in battle, some dying later as a result of war. Others had suffered from post-war traumas. He believed that the loss of these men and of their potential children had altered the population, and that those who had been pacifists or opponents of the war were in part responsible for a growing national belief that the war had been fought for no good reason. This attitude excused those who had not taken part and implicitly criticised those who had. This effect, and the granting of the vote to women over twenty-one, had increased the demand for a comfortable life. It also encouraged the nation to neglect external safety and its defences. Germany and Russia had meanwhile been strengthening their power of aggression. In the last year, work had begun to strengthen Britain's defences but this might not have been in time. The English spirit, however, still survived under the nation’s monarch. Notes on the text (the page and line numbers below refer to Volume XXV of the Sussex Edition of Kipling's works, Macmillan, London 1938). [Page 323 line 7] Solomon says Ecclesiastes 9,6: This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead. [Page 325 lines 10-11] Saint Augustine of Canterbury (d 604) first Archbishop of Canterbury. Sent to England as a missionary by St Gregory, he converted Ethelbert, King of Kent, to Christianity. [Page 325 line 13] Rachel mourning for her children Jeremiah 31,15. and Matthew 2.18: ‘Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not’.  [Page 325 lines 14-15] enfranchisement of all Englishwomen over twenty-one the franchise was granted to women of thirty and over in 1918 and to all women of twenty-one and over in 1928. [Page 326 lines 2-3] three well-planned wars all victorious campaigns fought by Prussia under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck (1815-98): in Schleswig-Holstein against Denmark in 1864, against Austria in the Seven Weeks War of 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. [Page 326 line 4] his fourth war the Great War, 1914-18. [Page 327 line 2] States Germany and Russia. Joseph Stalin had been in power in Soviet Russia since 1924, and had embarked on a highly centralised policy of industrialisation and rearmament. designed to make Russia strong and invulnerable. [Page 327 lines 11-12] the road which is paved with good intentions Proverb:'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. The precise source is uncertain, but St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) wrote ‘Hell is full of good intentions and desires’.  [Page 327 line 20] Moloch god of the Ammonites, to whom children were sacrificed by fire. For references in the Old Testament see 1 Kings 11,7 and Amos, 5,26-27. [Page 327 line 32] Mother, Son, and Grandson Queen Victoria (1819-1901), her son Edward VII (1841-1910) and her grandson George V (1865-1936).

KIPLING FRANCE AND BRITAIN

A Book of Words Rudyard Kipling XXXV France and Britain  Annual Banquet of the France-Grande Bretagne Association Cercle Interallief, Paris: July 1931 A FEW WEEKS AG0 I visited your wonderful Colonial Exhibition, and it recalled to me the time when as a boy of twelve I came to Paris with my father to the Exposition of '78. He was in charge of the Fine Arts exhibits from India, and the arrangement of them kept him very busy, for in those days expositions were not always complete even after they had been formally opened. So he presented me with a free pass to everything and told me to run away and play while he worked. I obeyed him—filially I obeyed him for five glorious weeks. There stood in the Trocadero gardens the bronze head of your great Bartholdi's statue of Liberty enlightening the world. For a sou one could climb up into that vast and vacant cranium and look out through its empty eyeballs into the secure and gracious world of Paris beneath. I went there often, and one time the Guardian said to me, 'See here, you small Englishman—never forget that for once in your life you have looked through the very eyes of Liberty herself.' And I did not forget. But I omitted to notice then—what I have often noticed since—that Liberty has not eyes at the back of her head to guard against dangers that may overtake her. It is bold to look forward. It is wise to look backward. Our two countries can look back together for many years. They were the first to disentangle themselves from the confusion that followed the fall of Rome and to stand apart as civilising nations. During that process it was organically necessary for England to assimilate the French conquerors which you had sent over. They would not learn English. It was equally vital for France to eliminate the English invaders whom we had sent over to you. It is true that they had tried for a hundred years to improve your tactics and strategy. You complained and with justice that they ruined your country. Now we have evolved the exclusively English-speaking tourist who annually invades your pleasant land but who does not ruin your country—in the same way. This minor adjustment, typical of so many others, took only five or six hundred years. Naturally it was accompanied by certain differences of opinion: but long before the end of that epoch those differences were regulated by conventions almost as strict as those which rule the composition of your classical poetry or the etiquette of our national English game. As an instance do you remember your Commodore Du Casse's immortal letter to our Admiral Benbow? It was after a sea-fight near Hayti—nearly two hundred and thirty years ago—when for personal or political reasons five of Benbow's ships deserted him at the beginning of the action. Benbow attacked Du Casse's squadron of four ships with his rermaining two. He was beaten off, and returned to Jamaica in his battered flagship wounded to die. A few days after the action Du Casse sent in by a frigate under cartel a letter to Benbow, which I quote textually: 'Sir, I had little hope on Monday last but to have supped in your cabin' (meaning, of course, "as your prisoner"). 'But it pleased God to order it otherwise. I am thankful for it. As for those cowardly captains who deserted you, hang them up, for by God they deserve it.' My friends, our unregenerate ancestors used language which we, their more highly civilised sons, must deplore; but mon Dieu! they understood each other jusqu'au bout. At the present moment the background against which these gallant gentlemen played their parts has vanished as utterly as their wooden ships. All the apparatus they employed has been changed beyond recognition, except, curiously enough, the anchor which prevents vessels from drifting. In place of these things mankind everywhere has been overtaken by the magic of new mechanism, which has saved them so much labour that it seems to save the exertion of thought. We have caused space to shrink so enormously that in another generation it will practically cease to exist. We have added such far-reaching powers to our senses that a fly's footfall on paper or the murmur of a weak heart can be amplified to equal the reverberations of a drum. Is it any wonder that this congestion—this apoplexy —of daily wonders should waken hope that the world itself can be speeded up and amplified so as to give men without too much thought an immediate millennium? The obstacle to this achievement is man's inveterate instinct not to confide his weight to a branch till he has tested it. At any rate the instinct forms part of the reserve of earliest experience by which the lives of men are unconsciously stabilised. And our two peoples between them possess the largest reserve of this experience in our first-hand proven knowledge of each other's characters, failings, and necessities. This triple knowledge has served us well. It has led us through the ages to a very distinguished respect for each other, ashore or afloat. It furnishes to each of us patience and confidence through our recent ordeal by fire. And it now underlies our friendship.

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/rg_words_thirtyfive.htm A Book of Words Selections from speeches and addresses delivered between 1906 and 1927 This is one of the six later speeches not included in that collection which were added for the Sussex Edition XXXV"France and Britain"  Association France-Grande Bretagne Cercle Interalliée, Paris, 2 July 1931 Notes edited by Leonee Ormond  Introduction   The speech   Notes on XXXIV   Notes on XXXVI   [April 11th 2011] Publication Published in pamphlet form, Doubleday, New York, 1931 as "Address at the Annual Banquet of the France Grande Bretagne Association". A short version was published in The Times for 4 July 1931, page 11. Collected in the Sussex Edition vol. XXV, pp. 309-14, together with the earlier speeches collected in A Book of Words, and in the Burwash Edition vol. XXIV. Background Kipling was the guest of honour at the Banquet. From the chair, the diplomat, archaeologist and writer, the Marquis de Vogué (1848-1910), told his audience that Kipling was loved in France for his writing, and also for his love of the country. After his speech, M. Reynard (1878-1966), the Minister for the Colonies, again thanked Kipling for his friendship to France. After hearing the speech, the art historian and literary historian, Louis Gillet (1876-1943), asked Kipling to write Souvenirs de France, published in French and in English in 1933. See also his poem "France", and the stories "The Bull that Thought" (Debits and Credits), "The Miracle of Saint Jubanus"(Limits and Renewals), and "The First Assault upon the Sorbonne£. Kipling began by recalling his childhood visit to Paris for the Exhibition Universelle. Speaking of the relationship between France and Britain, he noted the history of invasions of one by the other, taking the gentlemanly understanding of two warring admirals as an example of mutual respect. He recalled the First World War, and declared his belief in the friendship of the two nations. Notes on the text (the page and line numbers below refer to Volume XXV of the Sussex Edition of Kipling's works, Macmillan, London 1938). [Page 311 line 2] Colonial Exhibition held in Paris in 1931. [Page 311 line 4] Exposition of ’78 the "Exposition Universelle" or Third World’s Fair. Kipling describes his time at the esposition in Something of Myself, pp 24-25. [Page 311 line 13] Trocadero gardens in Paris, on the site of the Palais de Chaillot and opposite the Eiffel Tower. The Palais de Trocadéro was built for the Exposition Universelle and the head of Liberty stood in the garden during the exhibition. [Page 311 line 14] Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), French sculptor. His Statue of Liberty has stood in New York Harbour since 1885. [Page 312 line 8] French conquerors the Norman invasion of England under William the Conqueror took place in 1066. Kipling may also be thinking of the accession of Henry II, the first Plantagenet or Angevin king, in 1154. [Page 312 lines 10-11] English invaders Kipling is referring to the Hundred Years War against France, which began in 1337 during the reign of Edward III (1312-77). It ended with the French capture of Bordeaux in 1453. [Page 312 line 25] our national English game cricket. It never aroused Kipling's enthusiasm. [Page 312 lines 26-27] Commodore Du Casse Jean-Baptiste Du Casse (1646-1715). [Page 312 line 27] Admiral Benbow John Benbow (1653-1702) was a Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy. Having met a French fleet under Du Casse off Santa Marta in the West Indies, he pursued it in his flagship, HMS Breda, but was, as Kipling says, forced to retire because his captains protested and refused to support him. He died of his wounds in Jamaica soon afterwards. [Page 313 line 14] jusqu’au bout To the end, completely.

TOMLINSON BY KIPLING

"Tomlinson"  (notes edited by George Engle) notes on the text   the poem  [May 1 2003] Publication In the National Observer (23 January 1892), but according to Carrie Kipling's diary, written in the previous April. Collected in Barrack-room Ballads, R.B. and O.V., 1892; I.V., 1919; D.V., 1940; Sussex Edition, Vol. 32, page 322; Burwash Edition, Vol. 25. Lines omitted from the published version The ORG prints the following "extra lines" from the text of the original manuscript. Lines 33 to 36. "Ye have taken toll of a thousand soul in silver and snippet and share, And I have [perhaps Kipling wrote 'An I had']saved you," quo Peter, "I were saving Berkeley Square. Ye have borrowed and filched the shadow of right that is neither saving nor sin- Get hence, get hence, to the Lord of Wrong, for I dare not let you in." Six lines at the end So Tomlinson took up the flesh in his home in Berkeley Square And syne he heard the coffin head that bumped upon the stair. He shifted the shroud about his mouth and garred the watchers scream "I have lain," quo he, "in a drouthy trance and dreamed a murderous dream; But whether I rise from the red fever or the redder mouth of Hell, By God his will, for good or ill, I'll live my life mysel'." Background to the story On his arrival in England in October 1889 Kipling took an instant dislike to the followers of the so-called Aesthetic Movement, who tended to go in for long hair, affectation of speech and manner, and eccentricity of dress. In a poem ("In Partibus") which he sent to the Civil and Military Gazette in the following month he wrote- "But I consort with long-haired things In velvet collar-rolls Who talk about the Aims of Art And 'theories' and 'goals', And moo and coo with womenfolk About their blessed souls." Tomlinson is one of these, see The Long Recessional by David Gilmour (2002), pp. 92-95. Comments In Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work (1955) Charles Carrington remarks (p. 350): "The reader of Kipling's verse will not fail to notice a tendency to slip into Scotticisms (for example in "Tomlinson") where there seems no need of that dialect in particular."

Tomlinson

Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square, And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair - A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away, Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way: Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease, And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys. "Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die - The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!" And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone. "O I have a friend on earth," he said, "that was my priest and guide, And well would he answer all for me if he were by my side." "For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair, But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square: Though we called your friend from his bed this night, he could not speak for you, For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two." Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there, For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare: The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife, And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life. "This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me, And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy." The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path, And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath. "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and the tale is yet to run: By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer - what ha' ye done?" Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore, For the Darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before: "O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say, And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway." - "Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate; There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! O none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within; Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has yet to run, And...the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you, Tomlinson!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell: The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain, But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again: They may hold their path, they may leave their path, with never a soul to mark, They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease in the Scorn of the Outer Dark. The Wind that blows between the worlds, it nipped him to the bone, And he yearned to the flare of Hell-Gate there as the light of his own hearth-stone. The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew, But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him through. "Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?" said he, "That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me? I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn, For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was born. Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die." And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light; And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat. "O I had a love on earth," said he, "that kissed me to my fall, And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all." - "All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair, But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square: Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she would not run, For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!" The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife, And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sin in life: "Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of the Grave, And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave." The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool: "Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool? I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolthead jest ye did That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid." Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace, For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with the Fear of Naked Space. "Nay, this I ha' heard," quo' Tomlinson, "and this was noised abroad, And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead French lord." - "Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack! and the tale begins afresh - Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye or the sinful lust of the flesh?" Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered, "Let me in - For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly sin." The Devil he grinned behind the bars, and banked the fires high: "Did ye read of that sin in a book?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran, And he said: "Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man: Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth: There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be spawn of earth." Empusa's crew, so naked-new they may not face the fire, But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire, Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked it all abroad, As children rifle a caddis-case or the raven's foolish hoard. And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play, And they said: "The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away. We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find: We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone, And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own." The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and low: "I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go. Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place, My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face; They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host, And - I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost." The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame, And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name: "Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry: Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care: - "Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there, And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone. But sinful pride has rule inside - and mightier than my own. Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his priest and whore: Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore. Ye are neither spirit nor spirk," he said; "ye are neither book nor brute - Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute. I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain, But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again. Get hence, the hearse is at your door - the grim black stallions wait - They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late! Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed - go back with an open eye, And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die: That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one - And. . .the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!"