On the Contrary

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. But of this Mr. Hersey is, both literally and temperamentally, incapable. He is The New Yorker's reporter-at-large, not Virgil or Dante - hell is not his sphere. Yet it is precisely in this sphere that is, in the moral world - that the atom bomb exploded. To treat it journalistically, in terms of measurable destruction, is, in a sense, to deny its existence, and this is what Mr. Hersey has accomplished for the New Yorker readers. Up to August 3 1 of this year, no one dared think of Hiroshima - it appeared to us all as a kind of hole in human history. Mr. Hersey has filled that hole with busy little Japanese Methodists; he has made it familiar and safe, and so, in the final sense, boring. As for the origin of the trouble, the question of intention and guilt which is what made Hiroshima more horrifying, to say the least, than the Chicago Fire - the bombers, the scientists, the government appear in this article to be as inadvertent as Mrs. O'leary's cow.