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The two stories are about the same system of technological control by the A.B.C.. With the Night Mail seems to have been written first. Kipling starts a fascinating theme of the rejection of democracy by a world which settles for subservience to an unaccountable control body, and then , characteristically, gets so interested in the technical details of the dirigibles which provide the control and the social detail of the society which uses them that he loses sight of the key theme and does not develop it! Marvellous entertainment, but a lost opportunity in my view. Note also that his advertisements for the technical marvels are couched in the language of the Illustrated London News of 1890! His social imagination could not keep up with his technical. It is unfair to read too much into a tiny fragment of his work, but I do think that those two stories do exemplify a key limitation of his earlier work. ''The Ship that Found Itself ' is a marvellous story, but is it not just a little overloaded? ( My admiration for him is such that I feel he should be judged by the highest standards one can apply, The criticism of his 'knowingness' was made early by critics who hated him for quite other reasons, but I feel it must be taken account of and not dismissed as prejudice.) JW