KIPLING ON EMIGRATION.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12506, 6 April 1909, Page 4

KIPLING ON EMIGRATION.

Mr Rudyard .Kipling, in a letter to the Emigration Department of the Salvation Army, London, has a"' few characteristic observations on emigrants and emigration. He says: — "I don't dispute your statement that 'an able bodied emigrant, even without capital, is an asset for a new country. Canada, Australia, . New. Zealand, and in a large part South Africa were built up by that very, class, biit human nature being what it is, you will not find that fact admitted'in present day labour legislation. There is a material Calvinism which would limit' worldly prosperity to a few of the electors, just as there i » a spiritual Calvanism which confines salvation to a few elect. ... I think too, it often happens that families imported en block will, by their clinging together in their lonliness, confirm each other in their unwillingness to accept new conditions and the lcnlier they arc the more will they face inwards, just like a mob of strange horses on a run, an army settlement by people who, will not laugh, at them,, or tell tales of their pride (which is only their shyness) behind their backs. So for single" men and families the Army settlement on its own! lands seems to be most useful at .present. There is a type of man," as there is of family, which only -needs t-o be. taken out of England to adapt' itself' to a new land, as trout take to a new bropk ; but there are not very' many of them, and in England "they sometimes live on the outskirts of a good reputation — a quick, acquisitive, not too truthful breed, enormously satisfied with themselves. But they are a splendid cross on slower blood in the second generation, and it has struck me that they are the people you could reach. Of course the cry would go up at once : "You are draining England of its best blood," but is there not something to b.e said for the idea of drafting put the first ll and so giving the second "TLl'.'.a chance. There never was an Empire that offered such opportunities to all men as ours, and I sometimes -think that there never was an Empire whose ■"people took less advantage of those ; opportunities. " * ■