A Literary Occupation

Pax in Bello, peace in the midst of war, was the motto one writer chose to signify the private dilemma: how could the humanist, clad in the uniform of the occupier, write of liberal values, see with a liberal eye – and publish, or hope to? From the armistice peace of occupied France, from the partisan war and incipient civil war of Greece, from the all-out warfare in southern Russia, came writing that revealed not just the everyday split consciousness resulting from the overlay of Nazi ideology,