TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

Look, my American friends, it seems to me that something new is in formation on our planet. The material progress of modern times has indeed linked mankind by a sort of nervous system. The contacts are innumerable. The communications are instantaneous. We are materially bound like the cells of the same body. But this body does not yet have a soul. This organism has not yet grown conscious of itself. The hand does not feel itself a part with the eye.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, New York Times, April 22, 1945