HOWLING PROVINCIALISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19197, 13 June 1924, Page 2

HOWLING PROVINCIALISM

A KIPLING NARRATIVE. Pres* Association —By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, June 7. At the dinner of the Rhodes trustees at Oxford, Mr Rudyard 'Kipling was the chief guest. In a characteristically whimsical speech he recalled a certain night alter the war when a man from Melbourne and another from Montreal endeavoured to convince two Americans that the United States’ Constitution was 100 years out of date. Meanwhile a man from California was endeavouring to prove to one from the Cape, with the help of some small, hard apples, that no South African fruit could compare with Californian. The discussion continued to the point of exhaustion, and then somebody said: “Talking about natural resources, docs it not strike you that what we have all got most of is howling provincialism?” That would' have delighted the late Cecil Rhodes, said Mr Kipling. It was a saying that he .might himself have jerked out hall alouj at a Cabinet meeting. Mr Kipling reepmmended that such phrases, perhaps even more direct ones, might be used as passwords among Rhodes associates throughout the world. It was an asset toward prosperity, even for those whose lot would be cast in one land, to get full, first-hand information about men they would meet later. He warned Rhodes scholars that they would be delivered into a world where at the worst no horror was now incredible, no folly unthinkable, no adventure inconceivable; where at the best they would have to deal with communities impatient of nature, idolatrous of mechanisms, and sick oi self-love. Mr Kipling concluded: ‘‘There is but one means by which yon can miss prosperity —namely, if you try to get the better of tho gods, who sell everything at a price.”