CET: "Cells" was put on the album without its opening verse, by accident (although it had been recorded), and the artists would rather not have it put out as it is, out of respect for Kipling and his work, although the song makes perfect sense even without that verse.

Kevin McG: What can I say - those people cannot have listened to the words. Even to this Greek, the truth is obvious: From the album notes...

(Kipling was) both vaunted and condemned on the most cursory and selective examination of his work." Sometimes he "set up an idea just to deny it - a trick he used frequently, and which earned him a deal of odium from those who take their literature in soundbites or second-hand"

In fact, the very thing that attracted me to the Barrack Room Ballads, was Kiplings ability to see events and his time from at least two perspectives - the imperial British one and the personal, cog-in-the-wheel (i.e. Tommy's) one. Both pride and misery/exploitation. How can one call him racist when he has lines like these: "But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed nor Birth - When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth"! How can one call him an apologist for the British Raj with songs like Danny Deever, Ford o' Cabul River, the humiliation of That Day... Take his Recessional - even Orwell accepted it as a "denunciation of power politics".

But none are as blind as them that won't see, so WTF. We can't save the whole world from stupidity.