"The Army of a Dream" (notes edited by John McGivering)

notes on the text

[October 28 2007]

Publication

First published in the Morning Post on June 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1904, and collected in Traffics and Discoveries the same year, where it is preceded by the poem, “Song of the Old Guard”. The story was also published as a separate pamphlet in 1905. [The Morning Post was a conservative London daily newspaper established in 1772, and merged with the Daily Telegraph in 1937]

The story

This is Kipling's response to the worst features of the old army he observed in the South African war, the 'Old Guard', formal, set in its ways, ill-trained, unfit, often incompetent, beset by snobbery and caste, pre-occupied by rank and ritual, slow to adapt to new challenges, unloved and ill understood by the general population, the graveyard of too many promising young men. It is also a call to action against dangers to come. Like "With the Night Mail" (Actions and Reactions), or "As Easy as A.B.C." (A Diversity of Creatures), its narrative is based on a invented system of ideas, worked out in detail, with its own slang and 'in-talk'. Like "The Parable of Boy Jones" (Land and Sea Tales) it urges training for a future war. It is, perhaps, more pamphlet than story, and has been given a hard time by the critics.

The narrator falls asleep in his club and dreams a dream of a a Britain where military service for every able-bodied man is taken as a matter of course, where children as young as eight start to learn the rudiments of drill and tactics, and where there is a instinctive level of respect among all classes for the armed forces because everyone is involved in them. All the countries of the Empire are workning together in the system. There is close co-operation between army and navy, and a high level of understanding between them. There is also little distinction between civilians and the military. Much of the training is - in a formal sense - voluntary, but unless one volunteers one cannot vote, nor will one be respected or held in affection. There is also a sophisticated system of financial incentives to maintain and exercise military skills.

It is an idealised picture of willing involvement in constructive activity, with little sense of militarism or authoritarianism. This is a citizen army, part of the fabric of the nation, with a high level of preparedness for war, and the potential for swift mobilisation, en état de partir (ready to leave), to deal with any threat that comes.

As the narrator awakes from his dream, he realises that the young men who had led him through his vision are all long dead in South Africa.

Soldiers and sailors

Kipling had made friends with men at all levels in both services, and was very aware of their differences and rivalries, despite the long and mainly successful history of inter-service co-operation since the 18th Century. [See Simon Foster, (Hit the Beach ! Arms and Armour Press, 1995) who examines amphibious warfare from Wolfe’s landing at Quebec in 1759 to the Falklands in 1982; also Michael Hickey, Gallipoli (John Murray, 1995).]

The writing of the story

Kipling was working on the story during a voyage to South Africa in December 1900 (Charles Carrington, p. 315). Like many of his stories, it seems to have been set aside for a while, but three years later (5 December 1903), it was nearing completion, since he wrote to H A Gwynne from Bateman's:

...I am hard at work on 'The Dream of Belligerontius' and hope to get it ready in a few weeks. Of course it won't be a serious scheme of Army Reform, but it will, I hope, contain several suggestions at which men can peck.

[Thomas Pinney (Ed.) Letters of Rudyard Kipling Vol. 3. As Pinney explains (p.144) the reference to 'Belligerontius' is a play on Cardinal Newman's "The Dream of Gerontius", set to music by Edward Elgar.]