3-028-727 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Patriotic, but pessimistic: Mr. Rudyard Kipling, whose poem, "The City Of Brass", has annoyed Mr. Winston Churchill, 1909. Mr. Rudyard Kipling's latest poem, "The City of Brass,'' has not met with the approbation of the President of the Board of Trade. In his recent speech at the City Liberal Club, Mr. Winston Churchill, defending the Budget, which be likened to Aaron's serpent as having involved all other issues, said: "A constitutional issue overshadows all the other issues of the Budget - whether the House of Commons, elected by millions of people, is or is not to continue to enjoy, as it has enjoyed for two hundred and fifty years, the supreme power in matters of finance. There is the woeful wail of the wealthy wastrel, the dismal dirge of the dilapidated duke, and the hard case of the substantial citizen, who is angry at having to pay his share. Then we have the harsh gibberish of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who is astonished when he is asked to contribute to all the Dreadnoughts for which he has yelled. The great poet of reality, when confronted with any issue so concrete as the arrival of the tax-collector, can find no words to express his opinion except words which predict the headlong surrender of this country to any invader, however small". From "Illustrated London News", 1909.