But there are two kinds of simplicity.  The one kind is illustrated in a tale from The Day’s Work; it is the right kind of simplicity.  In no story of Mr Kipling is the devoted service and practical resourcefulness of the good Civilian so movingly celebrated as in the story of William the Conqueror.  It is the story of a famine, and of how it was met by the servants of the Indian Government.  The administration of famine relief would seem to be a simple thing when the grain has come by rail and only waits to be distributed.  But the district served by the little group of English in William the Conqueror was a district which did not understand the food of the North, and, if it could not get the rice which it knew, was ready to starve within reach of bagsful of unfamiliar wheat or rye.  The hero of the tale is finally reduced to distributing the Government rations to the goats, and keeping the starving babies alive with milk.  It was a simple idea, and the man to whom it occurred worked himself to death’s door, which was no more than another simple idea of what was due from him to the district and to his superior officer.

The wrong kind of simplicity is illustrated in a story from Life’s Handicap.  It is called The Head of the District, and it has to do with a simple idea which occurred to the Viceroy.  A Deputy Commissioner who understood the lawless Khusru Kheyel and had put into them the fear of English law had died and a successor had to be appointed.  The man for the post was a certain Tallentire who had worked with the late head of the district and knew the tribe with whom he had to deal.  But the Viceroy had a Principle.  He wished to educate the natives in self-government; and here was an opportunity—­a vacant post of responsibility and a native candidate to fill it.

“There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil Service who had won his place and a university degree to boot in fair and open competition with the sons of the English.  He was cultured, of the world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all, sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal.  He had been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there.  His name, if the Viceroy recollected aright, was Mr Grish Chunder De, M.A.  In short, did anybody see any objection to the appointment, always on principle, of a man of the people to rule the people?  The district in South-Eastern Bengal might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over to a younger civilian of Mr G. C. De’s nationality (who had written a remarkably clever pamphlet on the political value of sympathy in administration); and Mr G. C. De could be transferred northward.  As regarded the mere question of race, Mr Grish Chunder De was more English than the English, and yet possessed of that peculiar sympathy and insight which the best among the best Service in the world could only win to at the end of their service.”