“Electricity moves at a speed greater than thought, a speed too great for thought to grasp. These twelve words, which have landed like a white, soundless thunderbolt in the airless humidity of the Austrian post office, were written only minutes before and three countries away, in the cold blue shadow of glaciers, under the clear violet Engadine sky, and the ink was not even dry on the telegraph form when the message, the summons, burst upon a bewildered consciousness.”
