Page:The Hero in History.djvu/12

12 world is such that we may say, without exaggeration, that never before have so few men affected so many different fields at once. The key decisions in politics, economics, foreign relations, military and naval affairs, education, housing, public works and relief, and—save in Anglo-America—in religion, art, literature, music, architecture, and science are made by a handful of national leaders, and frequently by one figure whose judgment and taste become the absolute laws of the land. The tremendous development of means of communication, which makes it possible to transmit decisions with the speed of light to every nook and corner, ensures an effectiveness of control never known before.

A Cæsar, a Cromwell, a Napoleon could and did issue decrees in many fields. But these fields, administratively and functionally, were not knotted together so tightly as they are to-day. They could not exact universal obedience to their decrees, or even suppress criticism. Some avenues of escape could never be closed. Some asylums of the spirit remained inaccessible to their law-enforcement agencies. The active presence of conflicting tendencies not only in politics but in religion and philosophy, during the reign of absolute rulers of the past, showed that they could not box culture within the confines of their dogmas and edicts. Their failure was not for want of trying.

How different is the picture in much of the world to-day! A Hitler, a Stalin, a Mussolini not only can and do issue decrees in every field, from military organization to abstract art and music; such dictators enforce them one hundred per cent. Their decisions affect not only the possibilities of earning a livelihood—something not unique to totalitarian countries—but all education of children and adults, and both the direction and content of their nations’ lierature, art, and philosophy. They cannot, of course, command geniuses to rise in the fields they contro, but they can utterly destroy all nonconforming genius and talent. Through schools on every level, since literacy is a weapon, through the radio, which no one can escape if it is loud enough; through the Press and cinema, to which men naturally turn for information and relaxation—they carry their education to the very “sub-conscious” of their people.

Silence and anonymity are no longer safeguards. All asylums of the spirit have been destroyed. The counsel of prudent withdrawal and disinterested curiosity from afar that Montaigne offered to those who would escape the political storms of their