quotes_undefended.htm



Format: Single

Today, State-controlled murder and torture, open and secret, within and outside the borders of a State; State-engineered famine, starvation and slavery as requisite; State-imposed godlessness, or State-prescribed paganism; are commonplaces of domestic administration throughout States whose aggregate area is between one-fifth and one-fourth of the total land-surface of the Eastern hemisphere. These modern developments have been accepted in England without noticeable protest even from quarters usually quick to protest.

  

This is from “An Undefended Island”. a speech given by Kipling in May 1935 to the Royal Society of St. George,

Hitler and the Nazis had taken oiver in Germany, and embarked on a big programme of rearmament. Stalin, in Russia, was ruthlessly consolidating his distatorship, and doing all possible build up Russia’s industrial strength. Less than twenty years after the Great War, history seemed to be repeating itself.