This sardonic American comment on British ineptitude in the Boer War comes from 'The Captive'; one of Kipling's many stories about war. He wrote confident tales of adventures on the imperial frontiers, in Afghanistan, Burma, and the Sudan. But he also in 'BarrackRoom Ballads,' provided wry perspectives from the men int he ranks; and he did not flinch from recording shameful episodes such as the panic-stricken flight of an English regiment in 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft'. Kipling was dismayed by the inefficiency permeating the Army, and his satirical exposures of incompetence foreshadow some of the protest literature of the First World War. That war, in which his only son was killed on his first day in action, dominates his later fiction, which is permeated by a sense of loss, bereavement, and angry pride.
