``There was also Gott strafe Angleterre,'' Moreland reminded me, ``and Carthago delenda est, or if you will, Deus strafe Carthage. It isn't what the ideologist believes in, but what he hates, that puts the world in jeopardy. This is the force, in our time and in every other time, that urges the paranoiac and the manic-depressive to become head of a state. Complete power not only corrupts but it also attracts the mad. There is a bitter satire for a future writer in that.''

``Great satire has always been clearly written and readily understandable,'' I said. ``But we now find writers obsessed by the nooks and crannies of their ivory towers, and curiously devoted to the growing obscurity and complexity of poetry and non poetry. I wrote a few years ago that one of the cardinal rules of writing is that the reader should be able to get some idea of what the story is about.