SOMEWHERE?

Within less than six months of the earthquake and tidal-wave catastrophe in Korea comes the fearful shock in Chili, destroying whole towns, cleaving the very bed of the Pacific to such extent that the sucked-in water receded more than three hundred yards from the shore-line.

The Meterological Institute issues a bulletin stating how the earth-shock coincided with the passage of a sun-spot over the central meridian of the sun. Various seismographic measurements tell the strength of the shock; and this constitutes almost the sum of our understanding of a particularly terrifying fact.

Long ago, with increasing knowledge of the causes of such expressions of Nature as thunder or 'lightening, the human race lost the superstitious fear of these phenomena. But the earthquake still remains to fill men's hearts everywhere with helpless dread. The earth quivors--and suddenly the importance of all politics, wars, human ambition, dwindles to nothing.

In a vivid flash comes the realization that men are atoms living on the hardened crust of a boiling pot--on a tiny ball itself whirling among countless similar balls, according to one vast plan. Today the earth merely trembles, the seismograph vibrates, and the scientist asks: "Somewhere?"