Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1253 page)

I regret that I noticed certain signs of irreverent laughter when I alluded to the word “smartness”. I have no message to deliver, but if I had a message to deliver to a University which I love, to the young men who have the future of their country to mould, I would say with all the force at my command: Do not be “smart”. If I were not a Doctor of this University with a deep interest in its discipline, and if I did not hold the strongest views on that reprehensible form of amusement known as “rushing”, I would say that whenever and wherever you find one of your dear little playmates showing signs of “smartness” in his work, his talk, or his play, take him tenderly by the hand — by both hands, by the back of the neck if necessary — and lovingly, playfully but firmly, lead him to a knowledge of higher and more interesting things.

Imperial Relations

MR. PRESIDENT
and Members of the Canadian Club: Is this quite fair? It seems to me very unjust, most wrong, that the thousands of men who have fought and toiled and died for our Empire have passed for the most part without human acknowledgement, while a man who has merely caught the popular ear by trying to describe some of their thoughts and ideas should receive such a welcome as this. Well, the reward is not to the man himself. You have done him a great, a very great honour, one which I make bold to hope is not so much to the author whose name I bear as to the ideas that I have been fortunate enough to reflect.

Now the idea of our Empire as a community of men of allied race and identical aims, united in comradeship, comprehension, and sympathy, is no new thing. It grew up in the hearts of all our people with their national growth as the peoples in the Empire grew to the stature of distinct nations. None can say where it was born, but we all know the one man who in our time gave present life to that grand conception. Our children will tell their sons of the statesman who in the evening of his days, crowned with years and honour, beheld what our Empire might be made, who stepped aside from the sheep-tracks of little politicians, who put from him ease, comfort, friendship, and lost even health itself that he might inspire and lead a young generation to follow him along the new path. We ourselves are too near the man and his work to understand the full significance of Joseph Chamberlain. It is the high tradition of our land that in moments of need a man shall not be wanting to do and dare, and if need be to die, for his people. It is the custom of our land to accept that sacrifice as a matter of course — always without thanks, often with ungracious criticism.

But the custom has not weakened the tradition, for in all walks of life in every quarter of the Empire you will find to-day men content — more than content, eager — to endure any hardship, any misunderstanding, for aims that are not even remotely theirs, for objects in which they have no specific interest except the honour and integrity and advancement of their village, their town, their State, their Province, or their country. Now the history of Canada, of all our young nations, as I read it, is the record of just that spirit, the story of just those men, the pioneers who rode out in advance of the community, and who broke the trails for their brothers’ use. And we are so new even now that in every quarter of the Empire to-day you can see those pioneers putting forth on their quests. Behind them lie the little towns, collections of shacks or tin-roofed houses, where they buy their trading outfit and their trading-goods; just such little towns as your superb Toronto once was. The men you know, the men who live in them, will tell you seriously that in a few years they will be second Torontos, second Johannesburgs, second Wellingtons, second Melbournes, as the case may be. And we laugh! Knowing how miracles have been wrought on our own behalf, we cannot conceive that they will be wrought for anyone else.

But we do not laugh a few years later when one of those lonely pioneers rides up to us, the mayor of his city — no mean city — and well on his way to be a millionaire. We laugh still less when his city writes to our dearest rival and wishes to know how soon he can deliver a million and three-quarters city water-mains, with pipes and sewers, as per specification appended. Then we mourn. Then we grieve. Then we say to ourselves, if we had only known, had only guessed, that that dear little jumping-off place to nowhere was going to be what it is, we would have paid it some attention; we would have had more faith in it; and
now
we should be sharing the contract! But we have only to meet another man, and we go straight away and make the same mistake, laughing at this man on another pony, hailing from another collection of houses which will be another city. Is it possible that any of you as individuals have made that mistake?

Then the question is, are we not in time of peace a little too prone as nations to repeat that blunder in our relations to our fellow-nations throughout the Empire? Put it this way: Are we not each a little too occupied in our immediate present — in time of peace a little too occupied with our immediate present, to take an interest in the potentialities of our neighbours’ future? I say in time of peace, because all the world remembers when one of our community was in distress Canada went to her aid, as Australia went, as New Zealand went, as the Crown colonies went, without one thought of present interests, or politics, or pocket.

And out of that great gathering of our men on the plains of South Africa there was born, I think, a treaty of mutual preference between the various members of that Empire which — I am no diplomatist myself — I think regular diplomatists will find it difficult to annul.

It may be for reasons of her own that, for the time being, Canada will judge it expedient to make her court with older civilisations, to deal, for the time being, with nations of a more amazing present than that which belongs to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. But I am sure, gentlemen, that if you as business men send out or investigate for yourselves you will find in those countries that I have named the promise of markets worthy of your serious attention. Were I a business man I could show you that as regards our mutual trade we are no more than children playing store on the thresholds of our real markets.

I can put my hand on the map and point to certain countries that I know, and I can show you how the natural resources of such and such areas must create vast and stable industries, rearing up a power on a larger scale than the world has yet witnessed. And the plant for all that power has to be imported from somewhere! I could prove to you how the junction of certain railways and the conditions of certain ports must result in huge commercial centres, clamorous for the luxuries of all the world; how the inevitable growth of population must make a sub-continent of pleasant and luxurious homes in all their varied nature.

I can show you the sites of a chain of cities in the future fed by thousands and thousands of mills. And the plant for the whole of
that
development has to be imported from somewhere! But I can show you, moreover, in those countries that I have named, the same superb faith in the future, the same audacious handling of time, space, and material, the same humorous, fearless outlook on problems that would make older communities turn grey with hysterics; the same joyful acceptance of the apparently impossible, the same lighthearted victory over it, and, above all, the same deep delight in life and work that Canada has revealed to the world. And how could it be otherwise? The men of these lands have worked out their salvation under skies as bright and with hearts as large as yours.

They have developed and settled, they are developing and settling, vast areas with much the same machinery, moral and physical, as you use. They face the five great problems — I prefer to call them Points of Fellowship — Education, Immigration, Transportation, Irrigation, and Administration. They face them on the same lines as you do. Who, then, in the long run, can better or more understandingly supply their wants than you? Who in the long run can better or more understandingly supply your wants than they? Am I looking too far forward? I think not. A young country must take long views, the same as a young man must take long, very long, views. Our four young nations — the Big Four — have a long, an uphill, and a triumphant road to tread. Go you out, gentlemen, and make sure for yourselves that our roads lie together.

Growth and Responsibility

MR. PRESIDENT
, gentlemen of the Canadian Club, fellow-subjects — I am only a dealer in words, and you can scarcely wonder that I cannot find any words — speaking from my heart — wherewith to thank you for the honour which you have done me. The thing to me — the experience to me — is most overwhelming. What Mr. Gordon has been good enough to say about such work as I have done, I can only hope that you will very kindly try to — believe. But if any one of you in his life has ever been called “good”, he will perhaps recall the thoughts that went through his mind when he considered what he really was.

To one portion of the indictment I plead guilty. I
have
, I confess it now, done my best for about twenty years to make all the men of the sister nations within the Empire interested in each other. Because I know that at heart all our men are pretty much alike, in that they have the same problems, the same aspirations, and the same loves, and the same hates; and when all is said and done, we have only each other to depend upon. And if, through any good fortune, any work of mine has helped to make the men all over the world understand each other a little bit — I won’t say, understand — to keep them more interested in each other, then great is my reward.

I seem to have caught in the speech of one gentleman a reference to snow. I assure you, gentlemen, I explained the moment I landed in Quebec, that all the lumber in this country was shifted on pneumatic tyres in July. I pointed out that snow was unheard of, and that what they mistook for it was French chalk. I have done everything I could.

Now I do not wish to revive your dark past, or rather our dark past, shall I say, but fifteen years ago, almost to the day, I was in Winnipeg. At that time the city was seriously considering wherewithal she should be paved. The street pavement question was very important and, as far as I could gather, from the inhabitants of the city — the men of that generation — it appeared that at that remote epoch snow used to fall within the city limits and, when it melted, the streets were what I have heard called “muddy”. I left the city of Winnipeg discussing that problem, chiefly in buggies, that would not move, in Main Street, and I went away for fifteen years, which in the life of a nation is equivalent to about fifteen minutes in the life of a man. I come back, and I find the Winnipeg of to-day a metropolis. This morning I have been over, perhaps, more than sixteen or twenty-two miles of asphalt, looking at some small part of the principal portions of your most marvellous city. I have seen all the buildings that you have created for your convenience, for your trade, for your necessities, for your justifiable pride and luxury, and above all for the education of your children.

The visions that your old men saw fifteen years ago I saw translated to-day into stone and brick and concrete. The dreams that your young men dreamed I saw accepted as the ordinary facts of everyday life, and they will, in turn, give place to vaster and more far-reaching imaginations. Gentlemen, this record of unsurpassed achievement, and my admiration for it, is as keen as my envy. I say my envy, because, as you know, I have spent some large portion of my life among men of my own blood and race in other lands less fortunate than this land — among men who are labouring with their brains and the sweat of their bodies to build up new cities, and to make firm the outworks of civilisation..

These things are not accomplished except by the hardest of toil, high courage, eternal sacrifice, and very often bitter disappointment. The mere buildings and streets of a town do not tell that story to the outsider; but no man who has been present, as I have been present, at the building up of a new city, or foundation of a new community — no man who has been at the birth-throes of a nation, can fail to hear that story cried aloud, as it were, by every block, store, or private residence that he passes. Therefore, my heart goes out to the city of your love and your pride, because I know what lies behind the mere houses in the streets that one sees. I know the passion and the sacrifice that went to the upbuilding of each, and that will continue to go to its existence, and to all that its existence implies.

But I find cause for a deeper appeal in other things than those which you were good enough to show me to-day. I have realised here the existence of an assured nationhood. The spirit of a people contented not to be another people or the imitators of any other people — contented to be themselves. This spirit, of course, existed fifteen years ago, but that spirit, as I remember — and I have not forgotten some of my walks and talks in the city — then doubted a little. It found it necessary to explain. It stated its position, and, perhaps, it waited a little to see what other people thought of its position. Thank God I find no echo of that mood here to-day! I can feel by the men on the streets, and see by a thousand signs, that here is a people in their own land, whose heart-springs go down deep into the fabric, and who will be trustees for a nation.

This is worth more than anything else, for there is no unliftable curse on any people, except the idea of a weak or a degraded nationhood. Neither commerce nor art nor literature make up for the loss of that spirit. Without it the biggest city the world has ever seen is merely a shack of organised enterprise. With that national spirit the meanest collection of packing-cases that was ever tack-hammered together on a prairie can uplift and dominate a continent.