12 APRIL 1945, Page 12

t. Mrs. Rudyard Kipling was an American lady.

2. Mr. and Mrs. Kipling resided for about four years (1892-96) America, in the State of Vermont.

3. Mr. and Mrs. Kipling were on terms of dose friendship with Rhodes who, from about 1898 onwards lent them a house (The Woolsack) on his Cape estate for winter residence: He lived nearby on the same estate.

4. In his Autobiography (pages 173-4) Kipling says: " When Rhodes was hatching his scheme of the Scholarships, he would come over and .. . discuss, mainly with my wife, the expense side of the idea. It was she who suggested that £250 a year was not enough . . . so he made it three hundred. My use to him was mainly as a purveyor of words. . . . After the idea had been presented . . . he would say: ' What am I trying to express? Say it, say it,' so I would say it, and if the phrase suited him not . . . he would work over it till it satisfied him."

In discussing the financial side of the Scholarships with the Kiplings it is not difficult to imagine they would have considered and computed the annual sum required and the capital necessary to produce that sum. Mrs. Kipling, an educated American lady, would hardly have overlooked, or been ignorant of, the number of States and Territories then forming her own country ; and Mr. Kipling, with his exceptionally wide know- ledge and his care in verification, is equally unlikely also to have over- looked the point—these two apart from Rhodes himself. And I again refer to Kipling's Autobiography (page 12o) where he indicates that during the years of his residence in America there were 44 States in the Union, although apparently by July 1st, 1899, the number had been

Parva Domus,-Westlands, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 7. .