Why is it that I love, or used to love, trains so much? I thought about this often when I was effectively banned, by the virus, from my normal daily journey between Oxford and London, 63 miles each way. Even now, in bare modern trains systematically stripped of character and romance, there can be a glorious seclusion in a long-distance train that does not stop too much. The soft and distant landscape rolls by, and at any time I can look up and see a familiar hill, church, or stretch of woodland. I can name much of what I see, and have walked over a great deal of it, purposely seeking to know the land better. If I am traveling from the North of England to London, I always try to change at York, to the hourly nonstop train to the capital. The feeling of peace and irresponsibility that spreads through me as the train heaves itself out of the station is a special joy. For two hours nobody can bother me. For two hours I will not be disturbed. For two hours I will be enclosed in a warm and comfortable space, again passing through familiar towns and fields along the route so wonderfully described by Philip Larkin in “The Whitsun Weddings“, until the brakes tighten and I am in prosaic London. And it seems to me that everyone else on that train will be similarly calmed and soothed.
Of course, the accursed cell phone and the even more accursed smartphone have penetrated the seclusion. And alas, there are no more dining cars, a delight now almost completely abolished by spiteful managements, and available mainly on ridiculous super-luxury trains such as the pastiche Orient Express. Yet no restaurant meal I have ever had, including the pressed duck at the old Tour D’Argent in Paris (before it became a museum where you could eat the exhibits), has surpassed the breakfasts, lunches, teas, and dinners I have eaten in trains.
I think of the wonderful bacon and eggs, accompanied by soda bread, on the cross-border Belfast-to-Dublin flyer in Ireland; the vast plates of pork and dumplings accompanied by Pilsener beer on the somnolent Zapadny Express from Nuremberg to Prague; the fresh pancakes and maple syrup at breakfast on the California Limited, with antelopes fleeing from the train somewhere between Dodge City and Albuquerque; the first sip of tea from the samovar, served in a glass in an ornate silver holder, on the Red Star night sleeper from Moscow to Leningrad; the first glass of wine on a sunny September evening as the Rome Express, an hour out of Paris, clattered southward past the faintly minatory cathedral tower at Sens. Then there were the toasted teacakes near Grantham on the southbound Flying Scotsman, and the superb galley-cooked steak on the upper deck of the Chicago-bound Capitol Limited, as it climbed westward through the evening into the forests beyond Harper’s Ferry and up the Potomac valley.
Peter Hitchens, “Why I Love Trains”, First Things, 2020-07-16.
February 15, 2026
QotD: The love of long-distance train travel
January 21, 2026
QotD: White elephant airports
If history teaches us anything, it’s that airports, like wrinkle creams which cost the GDP of a small country but couldn’t iron out a bedsheet, can be wildly overpromised and underdelivered. Western Sydney’s runway might yet join the vainglorious global herd of White Elephant Airports: majestic, expensive, and standing alone in a field wondering where everyone went.
Let’s take a safari.
Mirabel: Montreal’s Monument to Inconvenience
Built in 1975, Mirabel International was meant to replace Montreal’s Dorval Airport and usher in a new aviation era. Instead, it became the architectural embodiment of “We should’ve checked the map”. Located more than 50 kilometers from the city, it was so unpopular that passengers would rather fling themselves onto dogsleds than make the commute.
Eventually, Mirabel stopped pretending to be an airport and transitioned into its second act: a car-racing track and film set. Somewhere in Quebec there’s probably still a baggage carousel being used as a wedding dance floor.
Ciudad Real: A Billion-Euro Garage Sale
Spain saw Mirabel and said, “Hold my sangria”. Ciudad Real International Airport opened in 2009 with a €1.1 billion price tag, dreams of high-speed rail links, and the confidence of a Bachelor contestant in week one. Within three years, it had no flights, no buyers, and no shame.
It was eventually auctioned for €10,000, less than a parking space in Bondi or a bottle of champagne at a Sydney rooftop bar. One imagines the bidding process was just two blokes shrugging in a room and someone whispering, “Ten grand and a paella voucher?”
Berlin Brandenburg: German Efficiency, But Make It Chaos
If you’ve ever wanted to see what happens when a nation famous for precision tries on farce, just pay a visit to Berlin Brandenburg Airport. Construction began in 2006, with an opening scheduled for 2011. By 2015, it was such a national embarrassment that Berliners stopped making jokes about British plumbing to recover emotionally.
In 2020, it finally launched amid the global COVID pandemic, after delays caused by faulty fire systems, suspicious cables, and the ghost of every German engineer pacing in dismay.
Nicole James, “Australia’s New Albino Elephant Sanctuary (Now with Parking)”, The Freeman, 2025-10-16.
January 2, 2026
How did Ancient Romans build their roads?
Metatron
Published 2 Sept 2025Roman road construction was a marvel of ancient engineering that began in earnest around 312 BC with the famous Appian Way. The Romans developed a systematic approach that would serve their empire for centuries, creating over 250,000 miles of roads by 200 AD.
Their construction process started with careful surveying using tools called groma and chorobates to ensure straight lines and proper gradients. Roman engineers would then excavate a roadbed typically 14 to 16 feet wide, digging down 3 to 5 feet deep depending on local conditions and expected traffic. The foundation layer, called the statumen, consisted of large flat stones carefully fitted together. Above this came the rudus, a layer of crushed stone and mortar about 9 inches thick, followed by the nucleus, a finer mixture of gravel and mortar. The top surface, known as the summum dorsum, was made of large polygonal stone blocks called silex, fitted so precisely that no mortar was needed between them. These roads were built with a slight crown in the center to promote drainage, and ditches were dug alongside to carry away rainwater.
Roman construction crews, often composed of soldiers, would work in organized teams with specialized roles for quarrying stone, mixing mortar, laying foundations, and fitting the surface blocks. The entire process could take months or even years for major routes, but the result was a road surface so durable that many Roman roads remained in use well into the medieval period and beyond. Quality control was maintained through strict military discipline and the personal responsibility of engineers who literally put their names on milestone markers. By 117 AD, at the height of the empire, this road network connected Britain to the Middle East and North Africa to the Rhine frontier, facilitating trade, communication, and military movement across the known world.
#romanempire #ancientrome #romanroads
December 28, 2025
It may seem petty to deny entry to EUrocrats, but it’s all they will understand
At first, I thought it was just another bout of Trump being deliberately petty over trivial stuff, but on reflection, it’s actually a neat way to bring home the message to the EU bureaucrats personally that they will be held responsible for their actions:
RE: Free Speech & Denying Visas to Euro Autocrats
The very most Orwellian mind game happening in the world today is the way authoritarian globalists are attempting to redefine the concept of “free speech”.
In America, “free speech” has long meant that we are free to say or write virtually anything without fear of government intervention or suppression. It is this ability to express whatever we want that makes it “free”.
The authoritarian globalists, however, have stood this on its head. They have decided that in order for their citizens to be “free”, they must be free of ever hearing or reading any speech that might offend someone or sow doubt as to government policies. To these fascists, “free speech” means GOVERNMENT MODERATED speech which somehow — through its moderation — sets people “free” from ever hearing conflicting views. As I said — straight out of Orwell.
Europe is, of course, the hotbed of this fascist redefinition of what free speech means, but we in America have only narrowly escaped this plague by electing Trump. Remember, Biden and his team were reliant on institutionally stamping out so-called “disinformation” as a means of control over the populace. We must be ever vigilant here in the USA that such thuggish government criminality never again be allowed to prosper.
I think it is very important that every citizen of the USA and the world understand the depths of depravity these people will sink to in order to control ordinary people. This is about mind control, and nothing else.
Ultimately, the value of true free speech is that it embraces the idea that we all have agency over ourselves; that we are free individuals who can and should hear conflicting views, and decide for ourselves what is true and just, and what is untrue and unjust. This is sovereignty over the self, and unfortunately Europe has never let go of the concept of serfdom, so self-sovereignty is a threat that must be stamped out.
The Trump Administration has been prescient, bold and effective in denying visas to the Eurotrash autocrats who would see free speech reduced to whatever speech unelected bureaucrats deem acceptable. I cannot commend Trump enough for the thoughtfulness and importance of that action.
In a world where almost all humans are linked by essentially the same communications platform, only one world leader is truly standing for free speech: Donald Trump. And I thank him for it. We all should — even the TDS sufferers.
For a relevant example, Dries Van Langenhove:
Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
October 24, 2025
QotD: What airlines could learn from supermarkets
Mark Steyn, “Flight From Reality”, The Spectator, 2001-11-17.
October 15, 2025
“Birthright citizenship” in Canada
In the National Post, Jamie Sarkonak explains what birthright citizenship means in Canada and why it makes sense to change the rules to bring Canadian practice more in line with other Anglosphere nations:
Canadian passport covers (pre-2025 on the left, current cover on the right)
Detail of a photo by Jusfiq via Wikimedia Commons
Anyone in the world can come to Canada, have a baby, and secure that child a lifetime of Canadian benefits along with a family link to this country for later chain migration. They don’t have to speak English or French; they don’t have to share our taboos against incest and rape; they don’t need to contribute anything to Canadian society. There are no guardrails.
But on Tuesday, we got a glimpse of how good things could be when Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner proposed a simple change to the law that would prevent citizenship from being granted to children born in Canada to non-citizens — unless at least one parent has permanent residency.
This would close Canada’s widest and most longstanding chain migration entry point without being too harsh on the foreign nationals who have established a connection to the country (though we do need higher standards for PR, too). It’s about as fair as you can get. Alas, Rempel Garner’s amendment was promptly shot down by the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals, who believe in the extreme approach of handing passports out like candy at a parade.
The rest of the world has noticed our complete lack of boundaries and is taking advantage of it. Non-resident births in 2021-22 doubled to 5,698 from the previous year’s 2,245. It’s a cottage industry in B.C., and in one study of 102 birth tourists at a Calgary hospital, the most popular source country was Nigeria, but parents also came from the Middle East, India and Mexico. Keep in mind that these are just the non-residents — there are plenty of other temporary residents giving birth here, but we don’t seem to be keeping track.
Even if these children grow up and never set foot in Canada again, they’ll be entitled to all the benefits of citizenship. They’ll be able to run for office, vote, and obtain consular services if unrest engulfs whatever country their family has chosen to raise them in. If they ever join a terror organization like ISIS, Canadian officials will be expected to retrieve them.
August 26, 2025
“One of the top tips for having a decent country is never, ever, allow the fuckwits to gain power”
If you need to drop someone off at London’s Gatwick Airport, you’ll find yourself facing a £7 charge for the privilege, no matter what day of the week or time of day you choose. Tim Worstall explains why:
“Gatwick Airport, North Terminal” by Martin Roell from Berlin, Germany is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
.
It’s sod all to do with congestion and everything to do with the tractor production statistics the fuckwits have imposed upon the airport.
The conditions attached by the transport secretary included national landscape provisions as per the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, more consideration for sustainability in buildings design and additional pollution-related mitigation measures.
The government said in its formal response to the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendations on the Gatwick DCO that it wanted more detail on how it would achieve its commitment of 54% of passengers arriving at the airport via rail within the first year of dual runway operations, which could be by the end of this decade.
The government has a target. That 54% of the arrivals at an airport — yes, an airport, where people get on jet planes — must be by public transport. Therefore the airport is charging for car drop offs in order to decrease the number of car drop offs. There is no more reason than that. Or, as up at the top, the reason there’s a £7 drop off charge at Gatwick Airport is because we are ruled by the fuckwits who have a target for public transport to an airport where people then get on jet planes.
London Gatwick has also accepted a requirement to have 54% of passengers using public transport prior to bringing the Northern Runway into operation and has reiterated the need for third parties, including the Department for Transport, to support delivery of the necessary conditions and improvements required to meet this target. This would include, for example, reinstating the full Gatwick Express train service.
Given the reliance on other parties to achieve this 54% target, should it not be achieved then London Gatwick has also proposed an alternative cars-on-the-road limit to be met before first use of the Northern Runway to address concerns about possible road congestion. Furthermore, if neither the 54% transport mode share or the cars-on-the-road limit are met, then use of the Northern Runway would be delayed until £350m of road improvements have been completed. This would make sure any additional road traffic flows can be accommodated and any congestion avoided.
It’s all fuckwit targets set by fuckwits.
Of course, there are those who think that fuckwit targets set by fuckwits are a good idea. For one of the problems of life is that there are always fuckwits:
When we talk about airport expansion, we often focus on runways, terminals, and the physical infrastructure. But what about how people actually get to the airport?
The journey begins long before passengers step foot in a terminal, and their choices about transport can have a significant impact on congestion, carbon emissions, and overall passenger experience.
One of the conditions set for Gatwick’s expansion is a legally binding guarantee that 54% of passengers will travel by public transport, up from today’s 44%. On the surface, it sounds like a simple shift. But transport isn’t just about availability — it’s about behaviour, convenience, and incentives.
One of the top tips for having a decent country is never, ever, allow the fuckwits to gain power. But we have done so therefore there is this £7 charge for a drop off at Gatwick Airport. That’s it, there is no other reason. There are fuckwits buried in the belly of the British state and they’re making the rules now.
July 9, 2025
QotD: “Look at those high cars roll”
Once encountered on the observation platform by the author as The Century rocketed through the Indiana countryside to overtake and pass a long merchandise train doing a mere sixty on the adjacent track […]
“Look at those high cars roll”, he exclaimed, as we passed the head end of the swiftly moving freight. “There’s nothing so beautiful in the world as a money making train going places fast on a spring evening!”
Lucius Beebe, 20th Century, 1962.
May 17, 2025
Learning racism in Japan
John Carter recounts how his views and opinions on racism changed while living for an extended period in Japan:
We started the conversation talking about the Shiloh Hendrix affair, but ultimately got onto the subject of the Land of the Rising Sun. As it turns out, Alexandru and I have both spent quite some time living in Japan, an experience which contributed to both of us becoming incorrigible racists. This is a very common occurrence: almost anyone who spends a significant amount of time living in a very different country will start to draw conclusions about the differences between human groups. Your levels of epistemic closure need to be extraordinarily high to avoid this.
When I first moved to Japan I was, in most ways, an unreconstructed liberal. I took the axiomatic precept of the Boomer Truth Regime – that stereotypes are both incorrect and evil, because all people are basically the same – more or less for granted. This was very easy for me to do: I’d grown up in a remote, homogeneously Anglo part of rural Canada, and while I’d had some degree of exposure to different ethne at university, this was during a period in which Canada was making a real effort to filter immigrants for quality, and most of the non-white, second-generation immigrants I interacted with were heavily westernized. I wasn’t unaware of cultural differences, but I generally assumed that it went no deeper than that, and that inside every human being there was a liberal Anglo struggling to break free.
Japan of course is a completely alien culture. Among the many profound differences with the contemporary West is that the Japanese are, famously, intensely and unashamedly racist, or “xenophobic” as it is usually framed. I was initially taken aback by how frank the Japanese could be about this, for instance by asking questions about me that were clearly in rooted in their stereotypical understanding of what young North American white boys were generally like. But there were two things about this experience that quickly made me stop and think. First, these questions were almost never hostile, but rather came from a place of genuine curiosity: they were simply trying to get to know me, which they would do by starting with a default mental picture and then testing to see if and how I conformed or departed from that picture so that they could update their model accordingly. Yet I had been assured my entire life, by every TV show, movie, and teacher, that stereotypes were always hateful! Second, a great many of their stereotypical assumptions about me were uncomfortably accurate. Yet I had been assured my entire life, by every TV show, movie, and teacher, that stereotypes were always wrong!
It didn’t take me long to get over this cognitive dissonance, which I resolved by the simple expedient of concluding that I’d been lied to by my culture, which is something that even then I’d realized happens a lot. This then gave me internal permission to observe the Japanese themselves, to notice the myriad differences in character and behaviour as compared to my own people, and to connect these individual level differences to their emergent societal consequences.
Learning racism in Japan is a humbling experience for a Westerner. I’ve travelled to a lot of different countries, and everywhere else I’ve either felt like my own people were basically on the same civilizational level (Europe), or at a noticeably higher level (South America). Japan is the only place I’ve ever been where I felt like an unlettered, uncouth, savage, stinky barbarian primitive one step removed from the cave – where it was obvious that my own people could learn quite a bit about how to comport themselves in a civilized fashion. Then again, at the same time, this taught me to value that very barbarism: it’s quite possible, as the Greek understood when regarding the Mede, to be overcivilized.
I could go on about this subject for hours, but I’ve got things I need to do today – like go to the gym and get some work done on other projects I’ve been engrossed in – and I wanted to get this out fast. In any case, I did go on about this subject for hours, with Alexandru and Phisto, so if you’d like to hear more about Japan you’ll just have to click through and listen.
May 11, 2025
History of Britain, I: Hail Prettanike! Early References to the British Isles
Thersites the Historian
Published 6 Jan 2025The natural starting point for examining the history of Britain is to look at how the island and its inhabitants first entered the historical record.
May 10, 2025
How did ancient people travel without maps? | How did they imagine the world?
Historia Militum
Published 15 Nov 2024Today we are straying away from the Roman military, but only a bit! Travel and Geography is still a very important aspect to understand when thinking about the military logistics of the Roman Empire, but it was just as important for its administration and civilian life. This video explains why most pop culture and visual depictions of Roman maps are wrong!
Scale Maps? (0:00)
Case 1: The Island Mosaic (2:55)
Case 2: Notitia Dignitatum (3:38)
Case 3: Madaba Mosaic (4:10)
Travel itineraries (5:07)
Cursus Publicus (8:06)
The Antonine Itinerary (8:47)
Galen’s Adventure (10:10)
Milestones (13:25)
Crossroads and visual itineraries (14:56)Small mistake! At 16:36, I meant to say “topological” diagrams, which disregard the accuracy of both scale and direction. “Topographical” diagrams, on the other hand, are very much to scale!
Primary Sources:
Historia Augusta, Alexander Severus 45, 2–3
Galen, De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis 9Secondary Sources:
Adams, C., & Laurence, R. (Eds.) (2001). Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire
The Antonine Itinerary by Bernd Löhberg: https://www.tabulae-geographicae.de/e…
January 22, 2025
Discover the ‘Lost’ Big Dipper Rum Cocktail Recipe
Glen And Friends Cooking
Published 2 Oct 2024Today on Cocktails After Dark we explore the fascinating history of Gander Airport’s iconic Big Dipper bar, once a bustling stopover for the world’s rich and famous during the 1940s to 1960s. This video dives into the golden age of aviation when propeller planes made Gander, Newfoundland, a key refuelling point for transatlantic flights. Discover how legends like Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, and Frank Sinatra sipped cocktails at the Big Dipper while planes refuelled, and learn how to make the bar’s signature cocktail using the infamous Newfoundland Screech rum. If you’ve ever been curious about Gander’s aviation history, old-time airport bars, or unique cocktails, this video has it all. Plus, find out how “Screech” became a part of Newfoundland’s folklore. Whether you’re a history buff, cocktail enthusiast, or simply curious about this legendary airport, you won’t want to miss this journey back in time. Grab your shaker, some rum, and let’s make history — one drink at a time!
The Big Dipper
1½ ounces Newfoundland Screech
1 ounce Cointreau
¾ ounce lemon juice
1 teaspoon simple syrup
(more…)
January 15, 2025
QotD: Innovations hiding in plain sight
Today, another half-century later, a coast-to-coast flight still takes you as long as it took your father in the 1970s. And with the major exception of computers, nothing in your luggage is likely to be much more useful or valuable than dad’s equivalent.
It may well be the case that aeroplanes fly at the same speeds that they did in the 1970s. I don’t know for sure, but my understanding is that supersonic speeds were banned due to noise factors. No doubt someone in the thread will clear that up. Let’s also concede the point about “major exception of computers” – like wow, let’s ignore the single greatest area of human innovation in the past 20 years.
Okay – the material your luggage is made out of is very strong and very light weight compared to luggage in the 1970s. Your luggage will have wheels on it now. Luggage with wheels would have been a luxury item in the 1970s. The entertainment on the flight will be much better than what it was in the 1970s. Remember the single movie in the cabin? That was a feature of flying until the late 1990s. I reckon the food the would be better too, today. Hard to believe, but yes.
Then what about the computers? Paper tickets? Movies on demand on your own device? Books loaded on your own device?
So while it may be true that the experience of flying is very similar – hurry up and wait, fly through the air, and arrive at a destination faster than all alternatives. But many, many aspects of the experience are very different and much improved. Cheaper too.
When thinking of innovation, it’s not just gadgets and new-fangled things that we should think about – it’s improved business models and improvements in pre-existing gadgets that we should think about too.
Sinclair Davidson, “Has innovation stalled?”, Catallaxy Files, 2019-12-14.
December 30, 2024
RIP Jimmy Carter, “The Great Deregulator”, 1924-2024
ReasonTV
Published 29 Dec 2024Nobel-Winning Economist Vernon Smith says the 39th president radically improved air travel, freight rail, and trucking in ways that still benefit us immensely.
______Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most successful ex-president in American history, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work promoting human rights and economic and social development.
But his single term as president (1977–1981) is largely remembered as a series of failures and missteps, sometimes literally. Gas lines, a record-high combination of unemployment and inflation on the “misery index”, and Americans being held hostage by Iranian revolutionaries for over a year all fueled the perception that Carter was a weak and ineffective leader. When he collapsed during a six-mile run, it personified for many the exhaustion of the country under his leadership.
But there was at least one way in which Carter excelled as president. He was, in the words of 2002 Nobel–winning economist Vernon Smith, the great deregulator. Carter forced the airline industry, along with interstate trucking and freight rail, to compete for business, with powerful and positive effects that continue to this day.
I talked to Smith about Carter, whom he met at a White House event for American Nobel Prize winners, and what it was like to fly in the days when the government controlled air travel.
December 6, 2024
Victoria’s Canada through the eyes of British visitors
In UnHerd, Michael Ledger-Lomas considers what earlier British visitors to Canada after Confederation wrote about their experiences:
Portrait of Rudyard Kipling from the biography Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer, 1895.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
… The re-election of Donald Trump, who has already daydreamed about turning Canada into his 51st state, might even rekindle Tory patriotism. After all, their Victorian ancestors created the dominion of Canada in 1867 to keep British North America from the clutches of the United States.
A longer view shows that Canada has allured but also vexed British observers ever since its creation. The Edwardian era produced an especially rich crop of writings on Canada. In 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, the first train from Montreal pulled into Vancouver. This completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) had persuaded the Crown colony of British Columbia to join in the new federation. In expanding Canada, the CPR also made it easier for British people to see the country. Having crossed from Liverpool to Montreal on a fast liner, they could visit most of its major cities, which were found on or near the railway.
Literary celebrities did so in enviable conditions. The CPR’s bosses loaned the poet Rudyard Kipling his own carriage in 1907, so he could travel in comfort and at his own speed. His impressions, which appeared in newspapers and then as Letters to the Family (1908), make for particularly resonant reading today. Although a man of strong prejudices, he had seen the country up close, rather than merely retweeting allegations about it, and was prepared to be surprised as well as disappointed by it.
Kipling’s contemporaries travelled with heavier and very different ideological baggage than we carry today. It was not wokery that worried them, but irreligion and greed, two poisons that had crept north from America. When the clergyman Hensley Henson steamed into Vancouver, in July 1909, he was horrified to see its beaches plastered with “vulgar advertisements”. The further [East] he travelled, the worse things became. The Anglican clergy were “weaklings” who made no dent on a materialistic society. Winnipeg was given over to “graft”. Young people in Ontario spoke like gum-chewing Yankees. Quebeckers were despoiling their province by setting up hydroelectric dams on its waterfalls.
Kipling did not share Henson’s churchy desire to scold his Canadian hosts. He was a cheerful freethinker who considered materialism a necessary part of nation-building. Canada had “big skies, and the big chances”: he admired its railway workers and lumberjacks for their insouciant and sometimes drunken swagger. Boom towns like Winnipeg excited him: he loved to see office blocks rise and streets flare with natural gas lamps; he lost considerable sums speculating on Vancouver real estate.
What worried him was rather Canada’s fading strategic commitment to the Empire. The modern Right understands Canada as a battleground for the values of “the West”. Kipling, who had married an American and lived for some years in Vermont, naturally believed in and did much to formulate the fervent if vague sense that English-speaking peoples share a civilisation. Yet this did not weaken his overriding concern for the political cohesion of the British Empire. Canada’s failure to join as enthusiastically in Britain’s recent war against the rebellious Dutch Boers of South Africa as he would have liked weighed on him — so much so that he kept calling the prairie the “veldt”. Kipling regarded the scepticism of Liberals and Socialists at home about whether the Empire offered value for money as a “blight”: now this “rot” seemed to be spreading like Bubonic plague, “with every steamer” to Canada.
The way to draw the dominion back to the motherland was to fill it with English settlers who shared his distaste for domestic Socialism. The dilution of English Canada worried Kipling. He allowed the Francophone Catholics of Quebec their differences — he found their basilicas romantic — but the policy of settling the prairies with hardy Slavs from the Habsburg and Russian Empires appalled him. These “beady-eyed, muddy-skinned, aproned women, with handkerchiefs on their heads and Oriental bundles in their hands” could never assimilate to English Canada. Nor did he care that many were fleeing oppression: people who renounce their country have “broken the rules of the game”.
