This week’s choice is Rudyard Kipling’s The Holy War, which draws parallels between John Bunyan’s book and the global situation in 1917.
One watchword through our Armies,
Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
One answer from our Lands:—
“No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!”
Poem 363. The Holy War
“For here lay the excellent
wisdom of him that built
Mansoul, that the walls could
never be broken down nor hurt
by the most mighty adverse
potentate unless the townsmen
gave consent thereto.”
(Bunyan’s Holy War.)
1
A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A private under Fairfax,
A minister of God—
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!
2
He mapped for those who follow,
The world in which we are—
“This famous town of Mansoul”
That takes the Holy War.
Her true and traitor people,
The Gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.
3
All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had ‘em typed and filed
In Sixteen Eighty-Two.
4
Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
Who crack beneath a strain—
John Bunyan met that helpful set
In Charles the Second’s reign.
5
Emmanuel’s vanguard dying
For right and not for rights,
My Lord Apollyon lying
To the State-kept Stockholmites,
The Pope, the swithering Neutrals
The Kaiser and his Gott—
Their roles, their goals, their naked souls—
He knew and drew the lot.
6
Now he hath left his quarters,
In Bunhill Fields to lie,
The wisdom that he taught us
Is proven prophecy—
One watchword through our Armies,
One answer from our Lands:—
“No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!”
7
A pedlar from a hovel,
The lowest of the low—
The Father of the Novel,
Salvation’s first Defoe—
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armageddon came,
He showed us how to meet it,
And Bunyan was his name!
In 1682 John Bunyan wrote The Holy War, an allegorical novel telling the story of the citizens of Mansoul who depose their ruler Shaddai after Diabolus is invited into the city:
In the city Mansoul, there are three esteemed men, who have lost their authority due to admitting Diabolus into the city. The mayor’s understanding is hidden from the light. The recorder has become a madman, sinning at times and condemning the sin of the city. But worst of all is “Lord Willbewill,” who no longer desires to serve his true Lord, but desires to serve Diabolus instead. With the fall of these three men, Mansoul will need to turn back to Shaddai of his own free will, which seems impossible. Salvation can only come if Emmanuel is victorious.
The official novel blurb, according to Wikipedia.
The message of the novel was that a soul surrendered to Diabolus can still find redemption if it can gather the strength of will. Kipling compares the imagery of the novel to the political situation in 1917, seeking to encourage Britain to stand firm against the tyranny, vacillation and lies of its foes and the “swithering Neutrals.”
Kipling prefaces the poem with a quote from The Holy War which was evidently allegorical in Bunyan’s time, suggesting that one’s downfall is only ever accomplished through one’s own consent, tacit or explicit. Kipling interprets this in another context: that of nations, whose downfall can only occur through the work of traitors and those who are indifferent to their country’s future.
The first stanza is a description of Bunyan who was indeed a tinker, a trade he learned from his father, and a Puritan preacher during the reign of Charles II—hence the description of “a vagrant oft in quod”: nonconformists were often arrested and jailed (in quod being a military term for jail) for their beliefs. Before becoming a tinker, he served in the Parliamentary army: “a private under Fairfax” (Sir Thomas Fairfax was Captain General of the Parliamentary army). Kipling comments that Bunyan foresaw the advent of Armageddon (the First World War) and “his single hand portrayed it” 230 years earlier.
In the second stanza, Kipling draws the parallel between Bunyan’s Mansoul and “The world in which we are”—both caught up in a terrible conflict, and both subject to the “true and traitor people” within. Eye Gate and Feel Gate are two of the five ways into Mansoul, the others being fairly obviously Ear Gate, Mouth Gate and Nose Gate, mirroring the senses—the ways in which we experience sensations that may be sinful in Puritan eyes.
The third stanza draws out the military organisation and technology (“highly-screened positions for flame or poison gas”) employed by Diabolus, which Kipling likens to that available on the battlefields, calling them “The craft that we call modern/The crimes that we call new” and suggesting that Bunyan had conceived of these enormities in the seventeenth century.
In the fourth stanza, he turns to those who actively or passively “hamper faith and works”—noblemen who will do nothing for their country, those who are inconstant in their belief or prefer their comforts to contributing to the war effort (“Perseverence-Doubters/And Present-Comfort Shirks”), and “brittle intellectuals/Who crack beneath a strain”—ivory tower inhabitants who Kipling, suspicious of intellectuals, considered invalidated by their lack of experience and unwillingness to put their theories into practice.
The fifth stanza continues the theme, drawing parallels between Bunyan’s characters and those who Kipling saw revolving around the political situation of the Great War. “The State-kept Stockholmites” is a reference to the backers of a Labour Party proposal to attend an international peace convention in Stockholm. Kipling, ever the conservative, saw this as seditious, and his opinion was reflected in the motion being defeated in the House of Commons. He praises Emmanuel’s vanguard for “dying for right and not for rights”—a fine distinction between sacrificing oneself for the right cause, rather than for the cause of rights (another of Kipling’s bugbears). He ranks the Pope with the “swithering Neutrals”, implying that since they provide no support to the allies, they should be considered to be enemies. Lord Apollyon is Diabolus’s general, and Kipling suggests that the Kaiser and Apollyon are one and that the Kaiser’s Gott (or God) is not the Almighty that Kipling (and by extension all right-thinking people) prayed to, but Diabolus himself.
The penultimate stanza makes the analogy explicit—though Bunyan lies in the cemetery of Bunhill Fields, his wisdom is “proven prophecy” and just as the security of Mansoul depended on the constancy of its people, the future of Britain was dependent on the unstinting and faithful support of its politicians, population and all those wishing to escape tyranny: “No dealings with Diabolus/As long as Mansoul stands!”
The final stanza repeats the thought from the first, naming Bunyan “The Father of the Novel” and “Salvation’s first Defoe” and claiming that “Eight blinded generations/Ere Armageddon came” Bunyan foresaw the destruction and shifting allegiances of the First World War and showed how they might be overcome.
I like this poem because, although Kipling is using it for jingoistic purposes and to press his own political opinions, it is an interesting suggestion that Bunyan predicted the increasing industrialisation of war and Kipling’s undoubted talent for writing is on full display.
There is only one version of this poem on YouTube and it is a terrible rendition, apparently done by feeding the text to Siri, so I can’t recommend it.
The Kipling Society’s website has a much more in-depth analysis of the poem and its background by Julian Moore.