10 FEBRUARY 1933, Page 6

If Mr. Kipling had gone to sleep in 1918 and

only woken up in 1933, one might understand the letter he has just written to M. Henri Bordeaux. " We have no other ally," he says, but France, " whose interests . accord with our own." The " Boche " has " learned nothing from the last War, from which he has relatively suffered so little." " As soon as he can see his way clear he will begin his work again." " The Boche has learned nothing." And how much has Mr. Kipling learned since his celebrations of the glorious campaign against the Boers ? When poets and novelists talk politics