Kipling and “The Truce of the Bear"

STAUNTON, Va., Sept. 25, 1914.—­On Sept. 5 The Staunton News printed some verses by Dr. Charles Minor Blackford, an associate editor, addressed to Rudyard Kipling, calling attention to the apparent inconsistency of his attitude of distrust of Russia as shown in his well-known poem, “The Truce of the Bear,” and his present advocacy of the alliance between Russia and Great Britain.  A copy of the verses was sent to Mr. Kipling and the following reply was received from him:

Bateman’s Burwash, Sussex.

Dear Sir:  I am much obliged for your verses of Sept. 4.  “The Truce of the Bear,” to which they refer, was written sixteen years ago, in 1898.  It dealt with a situation and a menace which have long since passed away, and with issues that are now quite dead.

The present situation, as far as England is concerned, is Germany’s deliberate disregard of the neutrality of Belgium, whose integrity Germany as well as England guaranteed.  She has filled Belgium with every sort of horror and atrocity, not in the heat of passion, but as a part of settled policy of terrorism.  Her avowed object is the conquest of Europe on these lines.

As you may prove for yourself if you will consult her literature of the last generation, Germany is the present menace, not to Europe alone, but to the whole civilized world.  If Germany, by any means, is victorious you may rest assured that it will be a very short time before she turns her attention to the United States.  If you could meet the refugees from Belgium flocking into England and have the opportunity of checking their statements of unimaginable atrocities and barbarities studiously committed, you would, I am sure, think as seriously on these matters as we do, and in your unpreparedness for modern war you would do well to think very seriously indeed.  Yours truly,

RUDYARD KIPLING.

On the Impending Crisis

By Norman Angell.

To the Editor of The London Times:

Sir:  A nation’s first duty is to its own people.  We are asked to intervene in the Continental war because unless we do so we shall be “isolated.”  The isolation which will result for us if we keep out of this war is that, while other nations are torn and weakened by war, we shall not be, and by that fact might conceivably for a long time be the strongest power in Europe, and, by virtue of our strength and isolation, its arbiter, perhaps, to useful ends.

We are told that if we allow Germany to become victorious she would be so powerful as to threaten our existence by the occupation of Belgium, Holland, and possibly the North of France.  But, as your article of today’s date so well points out, it was the difficulty which Germany found in Alsace-Lorraine which prevented her from acting against us during the South African War.  If one province, so largely German in its origin and history, could create this embarrassment, what trouble will not Germany pile up for herself if she should attempt the absorption of a Belgium, a Holland, and a Normandy?  She would have created for herself embarrassments compared with which Alsace and Poland would be a trifle; and Russia, with her 160,000,000, would in a year or two be as great a menace to her as ever.