‘A Jungle Story’

[In 1902 Saki followed up on his highly successful Alice in Wonderland parodies with a second series modelled on Rudyard Kipling’s short stories for children. They were first published in the Westminster Gazette as ‘The Political Jungle Book’ and later ‘Not-So Stories’ after Kipling’s ‘Just-So Stories’, which were published the same year.]

 

Mowgli the bare-limbed and immortal opened his eyes expectantly and spoke to the Other:

“I have told you of the Jungle and its laws. Tell me of the tangle that you call your political system.”

“Pardon me,” said the Other, “I never called it a system. Though perhaps,” he added, “it has fixed laws of an unobtrusive character.”

“But you must have a ruling Caste?”

“We are beginning to recognise the necessity, and one day no doubt we shall invent one. At present we are being looked after by a great course of politicians, some of whom will become statesmen in the course of time, if they don’t take up some useful employment in the meanwhile”

“Tell me,” said Mowgli, “how they grow into statesmen.”

“First, when they are about eighteen or twenty they read about Pitt and Burke and Talleyrand[1] and other real people; that is their hopeful, enquiring stage, and it is often their best. Then most of them go into the Parrot House of party politics and hear nothing but parrot cries from one year to another.”

“What are the parrot cries?” Continue reading