The Price of a Man's Life

An Illustrated Poem from the Past

Rudyard Kipling’s poetry has always had a resonance with me, and now as the mother of a young man serving his country in the military, I find the old poet’s words particularly poignant. We have always had wars, and perhaps always will, to the end of this world and time. We will always lose the best and brightest and bravest of us all to the futility of combat. Our honored men, and their dead which lie in frontier graves, never forgotten so long as we kipple.

Arithmetic on the Frontier

A great and glorious thing it is
  To learn, for seven years or so, 
The Lord knows what of that and this, 
  Ere reckoned fit to face the foe—
The flying bullet down the Pass, 
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass." 

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
  On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
  Comprised in "villainous saltpetre". 
And after?—Ask the Yusufzaies 
What comes of all our 'ologies.  

A scrimmage in a Border Station—
  A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
  Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—  
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride, 
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!  

No proposition Euclid wrote
  No formulae the text-books know, 
Will turn the bullet from your coat, 
  Or ward the tulwar's downward blow. 
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man. 

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
  Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
  Who knows no word of moods and tenses, 
But, being blessed with perfect sight, 
Picks off our messmates left and right. 

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem. 
  The troopships bring us one by one, 
At vast expense of time and steam, 
  To slay Afridis where they run. 
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.

—Rudyard Kipling

From Barrack-Room Ballads, page 208-208 in my 1900 edition