Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age

To the readers of National Review:

When I was at college, more than thirty years ago, The New Yorker magazine astonished the journalistic world by devoting the whole of one issue to a single essay. It was an essay on what exactly happened, that day in August 1945, when the Enola Gay, an Air Force B-29, let drop on Hiroshima an atomic bomb with an explosive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT. Some had sensed it immediately, for others the knowledge came gradually—that we had entered a new age. At The New Yorker the gravity of the event was recognized by a decision undertaken, one must suppose, with trepidation, and humility. It is now generally agreed that the symbolic deference paid to the event at Hiroshima, by a weekly magazine of urbane renown, was both a spiritual acknowledgment of the transcendent magnitude of the event, and an invitation to analytical meditation on its implications.

About the Author

Michael Novak

Michael Novak was a Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat.

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To the readers of National Review:

When I was at college, more than thirty years ago, The New Yorker magazine astonished the journalistic world by devoting the whole of one issue to a single essay. It was an essay on what exactly happened, that day in August 1945, when the Enola Gay, an Air Force B-29, let drop on Hiroshima an atomic bomb with an explosive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT. Some had sensed it immediately, for others the knowledge came gradually—that we had entered a new age. At The New Yorker the gravity of the event was recognized by a decision undertaken, one must suppose, with trepidation, and humility. It is now generally agreed that the symbolic deference paid to the event at Hiroshima, by a weekly magazine of urbane renown, was both a spiritual acknowledgment of the transcendent magnitude of the event, and an invitation to analytical meditation on its implications.