International: Deer & Men

How could the mild-eyed creatures know, munching their hay in the ship's hold, that they were a token in a play of forces called history? History to a reindeer is the rising and the setting sun, begetting and dying, the north-and southward seasonal flight of birds. How could the two deer know that if a man named Hitler had never been born, if there had never occurred that crisis of European civilization one of whose phases is called Naziism, if the Germans had never invaded Norway, if the British had not come to help, they would still be nuzzlers of Lapland...