LETTERS
Short extracts from The Letters of Rudyard Kipling
Volume 4: 1911-1919
Edited by Thomas Pinney
August 1914
18th of August 1914
I took John over to Maidstone yesterday (for Commission) and they turned him down for eyes. Past as physically fit in every other way. But surely, in view of our butchers’ bills, they're not going to stick to this. They seem to be turning men down here very freely. This has a double effect. It disheartens offering recruits and their neighbours and gives excuse for ‘sticky chaps. to fallout and hang back.
Like you I have been speaking, trying to get men to go into K's new army, but they are a bit slow and will be till we get our knock.
P.251.
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September 1914
3rd of September 1914
I was not able to attend to your letter of August 31st yesterday, as I was in town trying to arrange about John’s commission, and the wife was busy with the most tremendous lot of telegrams.
P. 252.
5th of September 1914
I am going to make a short speech at the Dome in Brighton on Monday evening about urging enlistment.
P.252.
11th of September 1914
We are all settling down to the business of war now. John goes off in a day or two to join his battalion at Warley in Essex and the rest is as God shall dispose.
P. 253.
October 1914
20th of October 1914
I am sorry that there is a schoolmaster instead of a man at the head of the United States today because I know something of the limitations of the schoolmaster's mind. As to what you say about atrocities, we are in rather close touch with that arena. Our hospitals are full of our own wounded as well as Belgian wounded, I am off to see some of these latter this afternoon. Also the county is full of Belgian refugees. Women who have been raped to any large extent don't talk about it, but those who have lost children and relatives are very eloquent. Belgium was scientifically vivisected on Holland’s doorstep in order that Holland. might draw instruction from the lesson.
P. 261.
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28th October 1914
You can easily ascertain how far the atrocities have been invented. If you care to send a representative to Folkestone, or to Oxford or Cambridge where they're taking in Belgian professors, or to any hospitals or refugee shelters, you would get very precise information as to the efficiency of the Germans. France also is open. Other people come and go there regularly, and the record of bestiality, deliberate wreckage and systematic defilement is the same as in Belgium.
P.264
31 October 1914
Dear Ollie, Many thanks for your letter which I observe is occupied mainly with John. He is on 24 hours leave here, came down from Warely in the car this afternoon, and at the present moment sprawls on the old green sofa in mufti, first time I've seen him in mufti for six weeks…….When I picked him up this morning he had just come off an inspiriting Sprint of four miles with his company in 38 minutes.
P. 265