A Diversity of Creatures

Diversity of Creatures, A, by Rudyard Kipling (1917). Fourteen stories, each followed by a poem on the theme of the story. ‘As Easy as A. B. C.’ is a strange tale of the future, A.D. 2065, when the planet is under the benevolent rule of an Aërial Board of Control. The disease of crowds and democracy has ceased, and a small outbreak of democratic agitation makes it necessary to deal with the American district of Illinois through aërial artillery of sound vibrations and withering rays of light. Stalky and Beetle reappear in the ‘Honors of War’ hazing a priggish cad who is converted from the error of his ways. ‘Regulus’ is a schoolboy comedy having to do with the teaching of Latin, the connection of classic learning and everyday boy life. There are three psychical stories. The phantom dog who haunts a man is the real dog “Harvey,” owned by the woman he subconsciously loves. ‘Swept and Garnished’ is a grim war story, in which the ghosts of murdered children appear to a complacent German woman making it impossible for her to disbelieve comfortably. ‘Mary Postgate’ deals with the effect of resentment for the slaughter of the innocents in the European war on one woman in England. She has an unexpected opportunity to be judge and executioner. ‘The Edge of the Evening’ tells of an encounter with spies who descend from an aeroplane on the lawn of a country house just before dinner. There are stories of the British peasant in real possession of the land whether its nominal ownership is Roman or English. ‘The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat’ is a comic extravaganza, the revenge of a party of motorists upon the magistrate who fines them unjustly for speeding. One of the group is a producer of opera, one a member of parliament, one a journalist, and all are brilliantly equipped in different ways for the confounding of their enemy.