s of war that we had put behind or forgotten for the past hundred
years have returned to the front and test us as they tested our fathers.
It will be a long and a hard road, beset with difficulties and
discouragements, but we tread it together and we will tread it together
to the end.

Our petty social divisions and barriers have been swept away at the
outset of our mighty struggle. All the interests of our life of six
weeks ago are dead. We have but one interest now, and that touches the
naked heart of every man in this island and in the empire.

If we are to win the right for ourselves and for freedom to exist on
earth, every man must offer himself for that service and that sacrifice.

*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