ON TICKET-OF-LEAVE
Reading edition
“Next time I’ll wear a German Helmet and plead ‘Military Necessity’”
The German went into this war with a mind which had been carefully trained out of the idea of every moral sense or obligation, private, public, or international. He does not recognize the existence of any law, least of all those he has subscribed to himself, in making war against women and children.
All mankind bears witness to-day that there is no crime, no cruelty, no abomination that the mind of man can conceive which the German has not perpetrated, is not perpetrating, and will not perpetrate if he is allowed to go on.
These horrors and perversions were not invented by him on the spur of the moment. They were arranged beforehand. Their outlines are laid down in the German war book. They are part of the system in which Germany has been scientifically trained. It is the essence of that system to make such a hell of countries where their armies set foot that any terms she may offer will seem like heaven to the people whose bodies she has defiled and whose minds she has broken of set purpose and intention.
Rudyard Kipling, at Southport, England, June, 1915.
