point of view, a quite sufficiently scathing denunciation to be made out of the Irish M.P.'s who were 'cleared' by the Times Commission, without pandering to the 'gods' of the Orange gallery. As it is, the whole poem he devotes to the subject rings false from first line to last. Not even the most resolute anti-Home Ruler can believe that a picture of Ireland, where 'the widow's curse is on the house' of the Irish M.P., 'and the dead are at his door,' is quite a complete one. What a pretty task for an honest and intelligent man in this year of grace to glorify the Irish absentee landlord by painting the 'patriotic' brutes and hypocrites he has brought into existence considerably blacker than painted devils! Can it indeed be Mr. Kipling who writes:
'"The charge is old"?—as old as Cain—as fresh as yesterday;
Old as the Ten Commandments—have ye talked these laws away?'—
Mr. Kipling, the 'illustrator' of Anglo-Indian social life, with five out of the six 'illustrations' based on breakage of the Seventh Commandment—Mr. Kipling, the enthusiastic mouthpiece of the individual who prays:
'Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst'?
