 Whilst he was in Belgium World War 1 broke out, and, finding this more interesting than militia arms procurement, he became an on the scene war correspondent for the "Daily News", reporting on the opening moves of the armies of the II Reich as they marched Westwards.Travelling throughout Flanders in August and September 1914, he became increasingly alarmed by the punitive measures that he witnessed being implemented against the Belgian civilian population by the Imperial German Army against even the lightest civil resistance to the passage of its troop columns moving through that country heading into France.Kettle perceived at this moment a threat to Europe's liberty from the nature of the II Reich, and began dispatching war reports from the Brussels warning against the dire threat to Europe from Prussian militarism, depicting the conflict as "A war of Civilization vs Barbarianism".