The late Limey poet/author/statesman? Rudyard Kipling was no stranger to the need for the British "stiffie-upper-- lip wise", as his only son, a First Leftenant in the Coldstream Guards, was one of the 60K Brit casualties at the 1916 Battle at the river Somme- where Brit General Haig apparently thought that if he kept hurdling his troops into the heavy German MG fire, eventually what was left of his manpower would overwhelm the dug-in Kraut positions after they either (1) Ran out of ammo for their 8mm Maxim MG's- or (2) the barrels of same overheated--
He had written the epic poem "Gunga Din", about a WOG water boy in India, some years prior to this- after the tragic death of his son (and thousands of his sons' brothers-in-arms) he became a recluse--
Two of his best poems or pieces of writing, IMO- as a confirmed lover of the dog, and a die-hard chauvinist, deal with dogs "The Power of the Dog" and what happens to a man's heart when he gives it freely to God's best four-legged piece of work, and also the line from "The Wedding" in which he so astutely says- "A thousand women like Maggie, are willing to bear the yoke- But- a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke"-- That was written in the aprox same era when Vienna's Number One Boy- Ziggy Freud was also discussing "cigars"--and Mark Twain was trying to give up smokin' them, for the thousandth time- Ah yes, the good olde days indeed-
IMO, and judged with the 20-20 hindsight through History's dark glass, had Britain had a man like Kipling for PM instead of that "Henry Tremblechinned" Neville Chamberlain in 1938, he would have told Adolph Hitler to "upstick it, arse-wise" when Der Feuhrer demanded his "elbow room" in the German speaking part of Chezkoslovakia--
I had also read that our beloved and now deceased gun guru Mike McIntosh could recite both "Gunga Din" and "The Crematyion of Sam McGee" darn near letter perfect, even after a test tasting evening involving some single malts!!
