Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 -- Correspondence; Voyages and travels
On the other hand, which is to our advantage, the isolation of the unfit
in one political party has thrown up the extremists in what the Babu
called 'all their naked _cui bono_.' These last are after satisfying the
two chief desires of primitive man by the very latest gadgets in
scientific legislation. But how to get free food, and free--shall we
say--love? within the four corners of an Act of Parliament without
giving the game away too grossly, worries them a little. It is easy
enough to laugh at this, but we are all so knit together nowadays that a
rot at what is called 'headquarters' may spread like bubonic, with every
steamer. I went across to Canada the other day, for a few weeks, mainly
to escape the Blight, and also to see what our Eldest Sister was doing.
Have you ever noticed that Canada has to deal in the lump with most of
the problems that afflict us others severally? For example, she has the
Double-Language, Double-Law, Double-Politics drawback in a worse form
than South Africa, because, unlike our Dutch, her French cannot well
marry outside their religion, and they take their orders from
Italy--less central, sometimes, than Pretoria or Stellenbosch. She has,
too, something of Australia's labour fuss, minus Australia's isolation,
but plus the open and secret influence of 'Labour' entrenched, with
arms, and high explosives on neighbouring soil. To complete the
parallel, she keeps, tucked away behind mountains, a trifle of land
called British Columbia, which resembles New Zealand; and New Zealanders
who do not find much scope for young enterprise in their own country are
drifting up to British Columbia already.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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