A Bomb Falls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 368, 12 July 1946, Page 5

A Bomb Falls

T is too soon yet to know what ] the experts think of the Bikini bomb, or how much they expected it to reveal. But it is clear enough already that it has disappointed the sensationalists who wanted the earth to rock, the islands to disappear, ships, animals, and.perhaps men to vanish in one spectacular flash. None -of those things happened, and it is not certain that they would have happened if the bomb had been bigger and the explosion point a thousand feet lower. Damage that we do not yet know about will probably be revealed as the survey becomes more thorough, but it seems more likely as these lines are being written-72 hours after the event-that the real sensation will be the escapes. In other words, the indications at this early *Stage are that war as we have so far experienced it has not been made impossible,- but just more horrible. Nations are not compelled yet to be reasonable, but

only more alert and far-seeing and imaginative; and in that respect Bikini is deeply depressing. It has eased no tensions, banished no shadows, answered no ultimate questions. The world is where it was a month ago, a hundred years ago, if the test is the answer to the simple question, What must we do to be saved? We don’t know the answer. We know that "fear, and the pit, and the snare are upon us," but they knew that three thousand years ago. Bikini has not told us how to escape the snare without falling into the pit or-how to come out of the pit without being taken in the snare. It has just addéd to "the noise of our fear," and strengthened the case of those who argue that fear has never been the gateway to wisdom. /