Volume 1 — Kipling and "The Truce of the Bear"
Reading edition
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.