Nicholson Baker writes in "Human Smoke" of pacifism in WWII. He quotes Christopher Isherwood, who -- along with Auden -- abandoned London during wartime.
"If I fear anything," he said, "I fear the atmosphere of the war, the power which it gives to all the things I hate -- the newspapers, the politicians, the puritans, the scoutmasters, the middle-aged merciless spinsters." Isherwood shrank, he said, from the duty of opposition: "I am afraid I should be reduced to a chattering, enraged monkey, screaming back hate at their hate." That's why he'd left. It was January 20, 1940.
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