Latin,” said Chris Robinson. “And one learns to go straight at a thing without splitting straws. One gets hold of the Elementals.”
(Well, did they? That was the gist of my perplexity.)
“One doesn't quibble,” he said, returning to his rankling memory of Denson, “while men decay and starve.”
“But suppose,” I said, suddenly dropping into opposition, “the alternative is to risk a worse disaster—or do something patently futile.”
“I don't follow that,” said Chris Robinson. “We don't propose anything futile, so far as I can see.”
6
The prevailing force in my undergraduate days was not Socialism but Kiplingism. Our set was quite exceptional in its socialistic professions. And we were all, you must understand, very distinctly Imperialists also, and professed a vivid sense of the “White Man's Burden.”
It is a little difficult now to get back to the feelings of that period; Kipling has since been so mercilessly and exhaustively mocked, criticised and torn to