The aeroplane that in 1945 took me from London to Berlin and Berlin to Warsaw showed me what I shall never forget. It was a clear sunny day, and we flew very low, never higher than about 1500 feet, over Europe. It was my first sight of Europe for six years. The Europe I had seen last in June 1939 was still, in spite of this and that, alive. Who would have believed than [sic] in a few short years it would be nearer dead than not? During the whole seven hours’ flight from the Dutch Coast to Warsaw, I saw only two railway-trains on the move: the roads were empty of traffic, the snapped-off ends of bridges trailed in the rivers. The curiously rotted look, from the air, of bombed cities was much less grim than this collapse of Europe into mediaeval conditions of travel. The few aeroplanes hurrying from point to point in chaos took the place of the angels a mediaeval painter might put in the top corner of his canvas. It seemed, in that first glimpse I got, that what had happened in Europe was so terrible that not only was there no forgiveness for it, but no chance of recovery.