A Lady in Hysterics.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 19, 6 May 1908, Page 37

A Lady in Hysterics.

CANADIAN VIEW OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY. PICTURED BY RUDYARD KIPLING. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, March 13. Mr. Rudyard Kipling begins in the “Morning Post” to day a series of “Letters to the Family,'’ dealing with the present Imperial situation, with special reference to Canada. The first article is prefaced with some rather laboured verses on the march of modern civilisiation, concluding with the following stanzas: — Nay! Though Time, with petty Fate, Prison us and Emperors, By our Arts do we create Tnat which Time himself devours — Such machines as well may run 'Gainst the horses of the Sun. When we would a new abode, Space, our tyrant King no more. Lays the long lance of the road At our feet and Hees before, Breathless, ere we overwhelm. To submit a further realm! After describing the “canker and blight,” which he professes to have found settling on England during the Liberal Government’s two years of administration, Mr. Kipling goes on to illustrate Canadian opinion as he found it in the smoking-room of an Atlantic liner:—

“The pessengers were nearly all unmixed Canadian, mostly born in the Maritime Provinces, where their fathers speak of ‘Canada’ as Sussex speaks of ’England,’ but scattered about their businesses throughout the wide Dominion. They were at ease, too, among themselves, with that pleasant intimacy that stamps every branch of our Family and every boat that it uses on its homeward way. A Cape liner is all the Sub-Continent from the

equator to Simon’s Town; an Orient boat is Australasian throughout, and a C.P.R.

steamer cannot be confused with anything except Canada. It is a pity one may not be born in four places at once, and then one could understand the halftones, the asides, and the allusions of all our Family life without waste of precious time. These big men, smoking in the drizzle, had hope in their eyes, belief in their tongues, and strength in their hearts. 1 used to think miserably of other boats at the South end of this same ocean—a quarter full of people deprived of these things. A young man kindly explain to me how Canada had suffered through what he called ‘the Imperial connection’; how she had been diversely bedevilled by English statesmen for political reasons. He did not know his luck, nor would he believe me when 1 tried to point it out; but a nice man in a plaid (who knew South Africa) lurched round the corner and fell on him with facts and imagery which astonished the patriotic young mind. The plaid finished his outburst with tne uncontradicteu statement that the English were mad. All our talks ended on that note.

“It was an experience to move in the midst of a new contempt. One understands and accepts the bitter scorn of the Dutch; the hopeless anger of one’s own race in South Africa is also part of the burden; but the Canadian’s profound, sometimes humorous, often bewildered, always polite, contempt of the England of to-day cuts a little. You see, that late unfashionable war was very real t<> Canada. She sent several men to do it, ami a thinly populated country is apt to miss her dead more than a crowded one. When, from her point of view, they have died for no conceivable advantage, moral or material, her business instincts, or it may be mere animal love of her chidren, cause her to remember and resent quite a long time after the thing should be decently forgotten. I was shocked at the vehemence with which some men (and women) spoke of the affair. Some of them went so far as to discuss—on the ships and elsewhere—whether England would stay in the Family, or whether, as some eminent statesman was said to have asserted in private talk, she would rut the painter to save expense. One man argued, with out any heat, that she would not so

much break out of the Empire in one flurry, as politically vend her children one by one to the nearest Power that threatened her comfort; the sale in each ease to Im* preceded by a steady blast of abuse of the chosen victim. He quoted—really these people have viciously long memories! —that five-year campaign of abuse against South Africa as a precedent and a warning. "Our Tobacco Parliament next set itself to consider by what means, if this happened, Canada could keep her identity unsubmerged; and that led to one of the most curious talks 1 have ever heard. It seemed to be decided that she might—just might—pull through by the skin of her teeth as a nation—if (but this was doubtful) England did not help others to hammer her. Now, twenty years ago one would not have heard any of this sort of thing. If it sounds a little mad, remember that the Mother Country was, throughout, considered as a lady in violent hysterics.”