Honor, Courage, and Kipling’s “If”

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a writer, the youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who penned vignettes on human nature, courage, and honor, including “Jungle Book.” But to me, his “work of works,” the piece to which I return and return, is his epic poem – “If.”

Why? Written in 1895 for an imagined son, two years before his son was born, Kipling lays out the elusive: how to be our “best selves” under pressure and reach … for infinity, a code.

The poem reminds us what matters, what character is, and how timeless the tests are – even now, a century and a quarter later. What Kipling said has lost none of its punch. Before “the rest of the story,” how this poem may have guided his son, John Kipling, pause and read it again.

Here is Kipling’s poem, “If” –

“If you can keep your head when all about you
     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

“If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
     But make allowance for their doubting too:

“If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
     Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

“Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
     And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
     If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
     And treat those two impostors just the same:

“If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
     Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

“Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
     And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

“If you can make one heap of all your winnings
     And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

“And lose, and start again at your beginnings
     And never breathe a word about your loss:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
     ⁠To serve your turn long after they are gone,

“And so hold on when there is nothing in you
     Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
     Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

“If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
     ⁠If all men count with you, but none too much:

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
     ⁠With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
     And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Amazing, is it not? True as the compass rose, tight and right, genius for times fraught, the kind of thing that should be taught and taught. So, what happened to young John Kipling?

Did Rudyard Kipling’s son John ever read that poem, have it read to him by his father, talk about it with his father, and strive to pursue its guidance? No telling. No record.

All we know is young John aimed to serve in the Royal Navy in World War I, hardly 17, but could not get in, so prevailed on his father to approach the Army. That his father was by then famous, a patriot, and persuasive may have made a difference.

In August 1914, John was commissioned, and deployed to France, where his father was a war correspondent. By September 1915, John was in the “Battle of Loos,” with poison gas. The British tried for German defenses. John was listed as “wounded and missing,” later identified as “killed in action”… reaching for infinity. He was just 18.

The loss of his son devastated Rudyard Kipling. He seldom spoke of it, blaming himself and all who glorified war. He wrote. One line lingers: “If any question why we died,/ Tell them because our fathers lied.” Kipling carried that wound to his grave.

In closing, while there is nothing upbeat about losing a son in the war, the mind wanders to Theodore Roosevelt, who lived Kipling’s values, fought himself, and lost his youngest in that war.

TR never spoke much of it, never publicly cried. But one night, his wife Edith found him sobbing in their library. She knew. She said simply, “Theodore, you cannot raise your sons to be eagles and expect that they shall turn out sparrows.” She grieved too, but she knew.

There is heaven-sent truth in acting with courage and character. Our nation survives by it. Yet courage, doing the right thing, Kipling’s code, is not easy. Honor like freedom – is never free.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.