To return to the above quotation: it is attributed to Kipling by the Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations who cite the Kipling Journal as their authority. I
have ben meaning to look the reference up but have forgotten when I have been
in the Library. I am grateful to John Radcliffe for the following.
Extract from the address by (the second) Lord Baldwin of Bewdley at the
Kipling Society luncheon, 5 October 1971 and printed in the December
Journal..
'I proceed now …… with two or three memories of the Kipling/Baldwin
relationship. I have been asked to comment on the suggestion that one of my
father's most pungent phrases from a political speech originated with his
cousin; and it may be that some have even searched Kipling's works for
evidence. The phrase I'm referring to is "power without responsibility", et
cetera. This, unlike many an attribution of authorship, happens to be true,
and I merely amplify it, if only (as they say) for the record, as told me by
my father. This is the way of it. "In the days when everybody started fair,
Best Beloved." (Isn't that a perfect beginning to a political tale? Who knows
which of the Just So Stories opens with it?) Or one might use another Just So
beginning: "In the High and Far-Off Times", Kipling was attracted by the
charm and enthusiasm of a rich young Canadian imperialist whose name was Max
Aitken, later to become Lord Beaverbrook. They became friends. When Aitken
acquired the Daily Express his political views seemed to Kipling to become
more and more inconsistent, and one day Kipling asked him what he was really
up to. Aitken is supposed to have replied: "What I want is power. Kiss 'em
one day and kick 'em the next'; and so on. "I see", said Kipling, "Power
without responsibility: the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."
So, many years later, when Baldwin deemed it necessary to deal sharply with
such lords of the press, he obtained leave of his cousin to borrow that
telling phrase, which he used to some effect on the 18th March, 1931, at - I
am pretty sure, for I believe I was there - the old Queen's Hall in Langham
Place.'
John Slater
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