The first set of quotations for 2014, for January 5th to 11th,  expresses Kipling's feelings about politics, and some - though perhaps not all - politicians:

1. They are outcaste. They have no speech of their own but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up above in the branches. Their way is not our way. They are without leaders. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their mind to laughter and all is forgotten…

 2. …In a raucous voice he cried aloud little matters, like the hope of Honour and the dream of Glory, that boys do not discuss even with their most intimate equals; cheerfully assuming that, till he spoke, they had never considered these possibilities. He pointed them to shining goals, with finger which smudged out all radiance on all horizons. He profaned the most secret places of their souls with outcries and gesticulations. He bade them consider the deeds of their ancestors in such fashion that they were flushed to their tingling ears…

 3. …he stamped his foot.
 'Tell them' he cried, 'that if a hair of any one of their heads is touched by any official on any account whatever, all England shall ring with it. Good God ! What callous oppression ! The dark places of the earth are full of cruelty.' He wiped his face, and throwing out his arms cried: 'Tell them, oh ! tell the poor serfs not to be afraid of me. Tell them I come to redress their wrongs - not, heaven knows, to add to their burden. '
 The long-drawn gurgle of the practised public speaker pleased them much

The sources of the last set of extracts are as follows:

1. (Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out, with a hillman’s generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the morrow...)   This is from Kim.

2.  (Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared for fifteen hundred feet, where a little village of stone-walled houses, with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt...)  This is from "The Miracle of Purun Baghat" in The Second Jungle Book.

3.  (There were still, hot hollows surrounded by wet rocks where he could hardly breathe for the heavy scents of the night flowers and the bloom along the creeper buds; dark avenues where the moonlight lay in belts as regular as checkered marbles in a church aisle...)  This is from "The Spring Runninh" in The Second Jungle Book.

Good New Year wishes to all

John R