Roosevelt and Kipling
Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist Doris Kerns Goodwin wrote the two met at the Cosmos Club in Washington when Roosevelt was a Civil Service Commissioner. Over the years the two kept in correspondence.
Roosevelt and Kipling were both awarded a Nobel Prize. Kipling is the youngest to win in the category of literature. In his 1910 poem “If” he shares much of the spirit of Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic” now known as the “Man in The Arena” speech.
February 5th, 1899, Kipling’s poem The Whiteman’s Burden was published in McClure’s Magazine. Kipling believed it was the moral duty of the West to bring civilization to the less enlightened in the South and East. Kipling’s view of Imperialism was primarily based on the orderly development of economic progress. He favored annexing the Philippines as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish American War.
Kipling’s opinion remains wildly controversial and highly criticized. George Orwell said Kipling’s view was morally insensitive and made him a gutter patriot.
During the Great War he lost his son in battle. Like Quentin, Kipling’s son John had bad eyesight. Turned down by the British Navy he used his father’s connections to join the Irish Guards. He perished in the Battle of the Loos in 1915.
