A Book of Words: Selections from Speeches and Addresses delivered between 1906 and 1927.

KIPLING Rudyard (1928.)

£1500.00  [First Edition]

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First edition. 8vo., original red cloth with the Ganesha device on the front cover, dust jacket. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited.

Inscribed on the title page "Viscountess Milner from the author. May 1928." and signed in place of his printed name. With an ALS signed 'Rudyard Kipling' on his Bateman's letterhead dated May 7 apologising for the delay in sending and referring her to speech XIII "The War and The Schools", a speech he gave at Winchester College in December 1915, addressing the death of her son, the former Winchester schoolboy George Cecil, who died on the Western Front, a few days before Kipling's son John.

Kipling's rather bellicose speech suggests that George is "among the first of that vast company of young dead who live without change in the hearts of those who love them ... He died - as many of you too will die - but he died knowing the issue for which he died. It is well to die for one's country. But that is not enough. It is also necessary that, so long as he lives, a man should give to his country, as George Cecil gave, a mind and soul neither ignorant nor inadequate."

A very fine copy, housed in a custom slipcase.

Stock Code: 230887

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