the favorable difference between the First World War and the second: in the first the word still had power. It had not yet been done to death by the organization of lies, by “propaganda,” and people still considered the written word, they looked to it. Whereas in 1939 not a single pronouncement by any writer had the slightest effect either for good or evil, and up to the present no book, pamphlet, essay, or poem has stirred the masses to their core.
