"What do you read?" I asked. "What do you want to hear? A list of German concentration camps? An account of the cremation of some six million innocent people by Germany? A survey of conditions in Russian slave labor camps? A discussion of physical torture as it is used by modern police in America? Or by military men? Or as a political instrument in Europe? Or as a diplomatic measure, by, let us say, the English, in their colonies? Do you want to hear a discourse on the behavior of Jap troops in war? On our own troops? Would you like to have me run over the treatment of people in American lunatic asylums? Shall I touch on lynching details--and other minor unpleasant experiences of the American Negro? Would you like me to talk about how we Americans disposed of the Indian problem? Would you be interested in some studies of corporeal punishment as it is administered in American slum homes and on American farms? Shall I recite the prison methods and jail practices common amongst our agents of law enforcement? Or would a review of the various effects of intense radiation on the human body, as well as its genes, coupled with the fact that about every other American is sitting around these days asking why in hell we don't atom-bomb Russia, tend to persuade you that we are not, essentially, humane people? Shall I discuss brutality in sports? Are you interested in considering our annual million smashed in automobiles as evidence of a certain basic scarcity of the humanitarian impulse? There are various business practices I could go into, in documenting the matter. Not the ruination of widows and orphans. Not the adulteration and poisoning of products. Just the little results of the basic premise of business which is that making money is the whole object, without reference to kindness or love. Or would you like to review the various sorts of crimes committed by the people in our fair land? Would you like to contemplate the interesting and vicious psychology of many of the _victims_ of these crimes? Shall we look at the degree of obliviousness, smugness, or rejection which Americans held toward the atrocities before the recent war--or hold now toward massacre and famine in India--famine in China--ruthless dictatorship in a dozen nations--Spain, for instance--Argentina--a lot more? Or shall we, on the other hand, investigate a whole field of cruelty as large as the one just hinted at: the _psychological_ cruelties of modern men? It would double the scope of the survey. The teachers--devising torments to sweat off their frustrations on their pupils. The common office techniques of the average man-of-affairs. The torments of the soul written into the class structures of society. The awful havoc wreaked on man whenever a minister preaches hell-fire and damnation. No fooling! We are not humane. We are--per capita--the cruelest people who ever lived, because, unlike the poor thieves on the two other crosses--we do know what we do!"