Hallowe'en & Hiroshima

Addressing a Hallowe'en editorial to the subject of Hallowe'en is a shade short of the quintessence of novelty.

A decent respect for the opinions of subscribers impels us to say:

We are not doing this because we are tired.

We are not doing it because we are ritualists.

We are not doing it because we are afraid to commit the Crimson to any proposition more controversial than the desirability of a happy outcome of the Yale game.

We are writing about Hallowe'en because we think that Hallowe'en, after the vein of humor has been sufficiently worked out, deserves to be taken with a deadly seriousness.

To say it simply, we think Hallowe'en is a good time for a good scare. We think it is time for a scare that contracts the most placid muscles of the heart, that creeps along the spine and mingles with the marrow of the bones, that agitates the well-springs of the elemental reflexes.

We need not be too literal. There's nothing to fear from witches. But what about witch-burners? They are piling up the faggots. What are we, who abominate the obscene, going to do about the witch-burners?

Let the broomsticks streak through, the stratosphere. Where are the brooms we need tomorrow on good old terra firma? Where are the new brooms that can sweep ignorance and envy and hatred and corruption from the world?

Forget the specters. But don't forget the spectacles that men and women all too often make of themselves. The spectacle that diplomats make when they wrangle in the UN, for recreation or the record. The spectacle that housewives make in the meat lines, a sight to make one wonder from which side of the counter the pork is being served.

Don't bother the black cat that slinks through the shadows. But keep an eye on the black fascists who lurk in the world, their ranks barely dented by the good work at Nuremberg.

What matter if children carve up a pumpkin and set a wobbly candle in the shell? But fear for your life if nations carve up the earth into spheres of influence. Beware the man or nation who tries to disembowel the One World which is the last refuge of our hopes.

Don't mistake our meaning. We do not invite terror for its own sake. There is no gain from the paralysis of the chicken in the presence of the snake.

We bespeak a healthy fear, the fear that comes from a frank facing of the worst that is in the present and a fair appraisal of the consequences to which it could bind the future. The fear which was unashamedly felt by men now at Harvard when they faced visible and invisible death on ships, in planes and in foxholes; the fear that they went out, grimly and with little joy, to meet and master.

Can we learn at Hallowe'en the lesson that we should have learned at Hiroshima, but somehow failed to get down cold? We had better do some cramming, for time works against us--in Washington, in London, in Moscow, at Flushing Meadows, in the haunted hearts of men and women everywhere in the world. And time works against us in the laboratories, where science is beating out some wonderful refinements on military arts which we thought were pretty well advanced a year ago. Now is the time to sense the danger, to leap to "the crystal walls," and to defend them with intelligence and fervor.