"CHILDREN NINE AND TEN."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 362, 13 April 1910, Page 2

"CHILDREN NINE AND TEN."

To the Editor! Sir,—A cable n?:ch appeared a few days ago on the "without encumbrances" questiou in Australia says that Rudyard Kioling, according to one of the London dailies, alluded to "the Australian mother with her children nine and ten." This is not quite correei, for Kipling did not refer to Australia. He meant New Zealand. The verse, which may be found in a poem called '"The Native Born,'' where each young oversea Briton toasts his own country (in "The Seven runs as follows: "To the smoke of a hundred coasters, To the sheep on a thousand hills, To the sun that r.ever blisters, To the rain that never chills— To the land of the waiting springtime, To our five-meal, meat-fed men, To the tall deep-bosomed ■women, And the children nine and ten!" The verses to Canada, South Africa, the West Indies, and Australia are quite different, the latter running: "To the hush of trie breathless morning On the thin, tin, crackling roofs, Tr> ' l '" haze of tha burnt back ranges And the dust of the shoeless 'hoofs— To the ri.;lt of 3. death by drowning, To the risk of a death by drouth— To the men of a million acres, To the Sons of the Golden South!" In this, poem also are to be found the lines: "We learnt from our wistful mothers To call Old England 'home';" ■which aroused so much enthusiasm and pleasure in the Old Country. In fact, they are often quoted as showing the affection existing between the oversea dominions and th> Motherland.—l am, etc.) READER.