Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1911 — SEES NO GOOD IN RECIPROCITY [ARTICLE]

SEES NO GOOD IN RECIPROCITY

Rudyard Kipling Advises Canada to Bewara. SAYS ODDS ARE TOO UNEVEN Thinks 90,000,000 People Would I n> evitably Dominate 9,000,000 by Sheer Force of Admitted Weight. Ottawa, Ont, Sept 8. The Montreal Star haa enlisted another recruit to the amtl-reeiproctty cause In the person of Rudyard Kipling, who has written a letter to tbe editor. This is the letter: "Bateman’s, Burwash, Sussex, England. “To the Editor of the Montreal Star: “I do not understand how 9,000,000 people can enter into such arrangements a* are proposed with 90,000,000 strangers on an open frontier of 4,000 miles and at the same time preserve their national integrity. “Ten to one is too heavy odds. No single Canadian would aocept such odds In any private matter that was as vital to him personally as this issue Is to the nation. “It is her own soul that Canada risks today. Once that soul is pawned for any consideration Canada must inevitably conform to the commercial, legal, financial, social and ethical standards which will be imposed upon her by sheer admitted weight of the United States. “She might, for example, be compelled later on to admit reciprocity in the murder rate of the United States, which at present, I believe, is something over 150 per 1,000,000 per annum.

“if these proposals had been made a generation ago, or if the Dominion were today poor, depressed and without hope, one would perhaps understand their being discuseed, but It le not one of these things. She is a nation and as the lives of nations are reckoned, will ere long be among the great nations. “Why, then, when she has made herself what she is should she throw the enermous gifts of her inheritance and her future into the hands c|f a people who by their haste and waste have so dissipated their resources that even before rational middle age they are driven to seek virgin fields for cheaper food and living? “Whatever the United States may gain, and I presume that the United States’ proposals are not wholly altruistic, I. see nothing for Canada in reciprocity except a little ready money, which she does not need, and a very long repentance. "RUDYARD KIPLING.”