While in the United States in 1910 I read Rudyard Kipling’s “If” and thereafter did not rest until I had sent a copy of it to each governor and lieutenant-governor employed in the special provincial government service of the Philippine Islands. Kipling wrote for these men of mine up in the hills without knowing it. They understand him and he would understand them.
There is not one of them who has not learned to
“... fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”;
not one whose personal experience has left him deaf to the appeal of the lines:—
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,