Quote of the Week: Rudyard Kipling, “The Stranger”

Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

▪ Rudyard Kipling, “The Stranger”, first published in the Morning Post, Collier’s Weekly and the Vancouver World, April 1908.

SydneyTrads is the internet portal and communication page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum, an association of individuals who form part of the Australian paleoconservative, “traditionalist conservative” and “independent right”.

4 Comments on "Quote of the Week: Rudyard Kipling, “The Stranger”"

  1. I’m curious, Sydney Trads. What exactly are your thoughts on immigration as well as those on race?

    • Hello again Svar,

      Firstly, please excuse the lateness in approving your comment, and providing this brief reply. We have been engaged making arrangements for our next function, which will be held on 8 April, and did not want to provide you a passing or cursory answer to your question. Moreover, we felt it was not appropriate to approve your question without answering it in a timely fashion, hence the delay.

      Your question is certainly a legitimate and important one, particularly in the context of the growing xenophilia and ethnomasochism of Western intellectuals and “our” political class. Be that as it may, we cannot do adequate justice to your question by way of a blog comment alone. The subject matter is just too profound and complex. We have, however, asked one of our members to draft a short piece that addresses some of these issues, and when this is done, we will gladly publish it in our “News and Opinion” section. At this stage, there is no way we can foreshadow when this will be done.

      Nevertheless, so as not to leave you entirely unsatisfied, we recommend Henry Hopewood-Phillips’ open letter to the pseudo-anti-fascist group “Searchlight”, which was published on the Traditional Britain Group’s weblog on 7 May 2013: “Searchlight Are Watching”. We also recommend some comments from commentator “EF” and our replies to him (17 March) all of which may be of tangential or direct interest to you, and which appear at “Ideology in Our Vexicology”. For a more detailed exposition on these themes, we can further recommend the work of Lawrence Auster, particularly his two dissertations Huddled Clichés and Erasing America as well as his booklet The Path to National Suicide. These may be found on his “unofficial website” which is administered by one of his colleagues or associates, Joel LeFevre. As at this posting, that website seems to be down, but we believe that this is only temporary.

      • I’m just curious if you think that non-whites are able to assimilate into a white society. I personally think that it is very possible but only in small numbers through cultural assimilation and intermarriage. I believe that the immigration from non-traditional sources should be minimal and that the refugee deal should be non-existent. Also, I think that it is best to completely exclude Africans because they are far too different than all the other races mainly because of the sheer crime and the heinous unhuman nature of the crimes they commit. I have heard that African refugees to Israel have caused rapes and those to Australia have caused many problems such as rape and violence. Which is typical behavior of blacks in America.

        • These are concerns that arise from observing the extreme social trauma caused by so-called “progressive” policies of the last fifty years. These policies have been aggressively prosecuted with almost complete disregard of public (native) sentiment, and with little to no principled opposition within the mainstream. It is no wonder that a negative reaction is fostered, particularly on the periphery of conservative political discourse. Although the concerns you raise are certainly understandable, it is perhaps better to focus on a positive reaction instead: the proposition being that if the native Western culture had a healthy sense of self worth and desire to exist as a unique people in its own right, the problems you identify would simply never have come to pass. So perhaps traditionalists’ energy should be focused on reaffirming our right to exist as a people. We must first focus on ourselves, not on The Other. That, we believe, is a far more acceptable programme for restoration than “attacking” (for that is how it would be perceived) alien minority groups for their dysfunction or incompatibility with our social environment. We must acknowledge that the damage that the left has done to our civilisation is colossal, and we are in no state to deal with it at present. First things are first: we must demand and obtain recognition as a credible interest group with legitimate interests and a right to self preservation. At present, such demands have hardly even been acknowledged, let alone met.

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