Show Shrouded in Fear About three weeks we curled up with our favorite mag- y azine and prepared to get our weekly quota of We flipped the pages to the place where we usually find delightfully prodding humor of the New Yorker only to find that the whole magazine was to an article by John Hersey entitled w It isn't the way is written and it is written masterfully that makes it must reading for every adult It is the awakening story it tells so that makes this story stand out from dozens of other stories about It is an introduction to the atomic is really a story about people people who lived to tell about the dropping of the atomic It is a story about six human beings who witnessed the destruction that many of us probably will not to tell about if there is another Anguish of radiation decaying lost loved shattered lives these the things Hersey puts on paper as he quietly blueprints the awful possibilities of the world in which we now Hersey weaves together the story of six people who emerged alive from the hell that was He draws in bold truthful lines a picture of tomorrow's was that every one of us should As the new year began this week at the University of we recalled a remark made before the year's first faculty meeting last In President said that our school must have a international that we cannot be provincial or narrow in if we were in charge of freshman orientation or taught freshman English we would consider it our duty first of all to acquaint freshmen with the kind of world in which they are going to We would cram into the head of every freshman student the sickening picture of Hiroshima after We would make the words come alive for him in terms of burning in terms of a lightening flash that crushed a We his mind until we made him fear war as it should be We would just make him read And when he had finished we would not have to say a When he finished the story he would know better than we could ever tell him the kind of world in which he lives a world with possibilities of undreamed of of lightening quick destruction and slow If he read at the outset of his college career he would know how meaningless is anything he can learn to how insecure are his dreams in a world ruled by such hideous Maybe scaring him into a knowledge of real meaning of the atomic age would not accomplish But if he knew how indescribably horrible an atomic war would we think he would devote a good his college career to honestly seeking the answers to the enigma of international And we have just enough optimism left to think that if enough people search the answer it can be |