James Como expounds on the literary style of C.S. Lewis in the recent New Criterion essay “Le style c’est l’homme même” and in the 2014 essay “His Fugitive Voice: After Fifty Years.” In each of these essays Como quotes from Lewis’s November 1933 letter to his friend Arthur Greeves.

Lewis wrote: “[N]othing can fully excuse the iniquity of Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. Did you see that he said ‘The Jews have made no contribution to human culture and in crushing them I am doing the will of the Lord‘? Now as the whole idea of ‘the will of the Lord’ is precisely what the world owes to the Jews, the blaspheming tyrant has in a single sentence shown that he is as contemptible for his stupidity as he is detestable for his cruelty.”

Como himself does not provide a source either for the Lewis quote or the Hitler quote, and I have slightly revised the Lewis quote to comport with the text posted here. However, it provides a clear window into Lewis’s thought bearing on the news of the day.

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