THE WORLD END HABIT

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6807, 10 January 1929, Page 9

THE WORLD END HABIT

KIPLING ON TOURISTS. Goil made men; God made women, and then He made passengers. Mr. Rudyard Kipling- has many amusing—and not a few wise—things to say of passengers in general, and of those who had adopted the “Worldend habit" in particular, at the annual dinner of the Liverpool Shipbrokers’ Benevolent Society at Liverpool recently. Quoting the above lines, he added: “This libel is based on the cruel superstition that if you put people into a ship, and roll them round Us-; hant., by the time they are decanted at. their first port, they look and behave like nothing on the fate of the waters, except passengers. “I expect that this accounts for the ay we were treated within human memory,” continued Mr Kipling. “Our cabins used to open directly into the dining saloon, and we were warned by notices on the mahogany inlaid mizzen-mant, which comes through the table, that we wore under the authority of the master, and that ‘tho limit of his authority was the needs of the case, having regard to ;he security of tho ship and those on board.’

“But now that we have imposed the world-end habit on the week-end habit, the case is altered. “So long as wo passengers muster at boat-stations with our belts on, and do not try to alter the ship’s course or set her alight, we can. do absolutely what we please. And we do. “Wo arrive in 20,000-ton lincr3 to assault lovely and innocent coast towns, a thousand of us, under cover of a gas attack by 200 motor-cars. “We roar through tho streets, a pillar of dust by day. We come back at night, with our picture postcards, to dance to amplified gramophones on promenade decks till it it time to call tho boarding parties away to carry the next place of interest on tho programme.

“And this prodigious tourist traffic is increasing,” continued Mr. Kipling.

“Timo and distanco only excite it to wilder effort. There is a man at this tabic who expressed his regret to mo that he could not for tho moment — for the moment, mark you —include the Galapagos. Islands, where the giant tortoises come from, in a tourist itinerary. “Well, even supposing wo may bo able next year to cruise about scratching our initials on turtle-back sterns, what is the good of us? “Apart from our dividend-earning capacity, what moral purpose do we passengers subserve in the general scheme of things. This—and it is not a little matter.

“When we are home again, and have arranged the snapshots of ourselves standing in front of the Pyramids or the Parthenon, we have, at the lowest, realised that there are other lands than ours where people live their own lives in their own way, and seem quite happy about it. “And when interest in one’s neighbour, curiosity about his housekeeping and understanding of his surroundings are waked in hundreds of thousands of hearts, they make fer tolerance, goodwill, and so peace. “Much of this good the world owes to those big companies who foresaw that after tho war people would need a little fresh air and exercise, and supplied it. I do not accuse them of undiluted benevolence; but organisations that have to visualise tho full circuit of the globe as a matter of daily routine, arc given—gloriously given—to building better than they know. The history of Liverpool since the Restoration is proof. “The mere constructive imagination used to order and equip a port that sc-rves every sea far out —marches what is known as ‘imagination’ in the imaginative callings. The demands on it are more incalculable, tho difficulties of execution greater, the penalties of failure more severe. “But these trifles do not affect us passengers. All we demand of you is to be taken everywhere as punctually as by train, as cheaply and as quickly as possible, in the greatest luxury, and, of course, in absolute safety. Nothing more.”