| Jonathan Schell's work first appeared as a series of articles in the New Yorker. They aroused | ||
| wide interest and when they appeared in the United States in book form their impact was | ||
| enormous. 'The new Bible of our time' was one of the milder terms used by the reviewers, and | ||
| certainly Mr Schell writes with the force of an Old Testament prophet. Like those prophets, he | ||
| 5 | has a simple message : repent, before it is too late! But also like those prophets, he is not very | |
| precise as to what we tought to do when we have repented. | ||
| By any standards, The Fate of the Earth is an uneven book, but a reviewer in the Sunday Times | ||
| would probably have said the same about the work of Jeremiah*. 'Evenness', the prophets will | ||
| reply, 'is less important than getting the message across.' But still, the point must be made. | ||
| 10 | Mr Schell treats his subject in three sections, of which the first is by far the best; so good | |
| indeed that one suspects that many of his more enthusiastic reviewers read no further. It consists | ||
| of a description of nuclear holocaust, and everyone concerned with defense policy should be | ||
| compelled to read it. It is not original; there have been many such accounts written in the past 35 | ||
| years, ever since John Hershey's 'Hiroshima', and Mr Schell draws on them very freely , but to | ||
| 15 | their accounts of the human damage that would be inflicted by nuclear war he adds a convincing | |
| account of the ecological catastrophe that would also be involved; a catastrophe which makes all | ||
| attempts to estimate the outcome simply in terms of human 'casualties' so dangerously misleading. | ||
| The complete destruction of the human race is a matter that understandably obsesses Mr | ||
| Schell, and the second part of his book consists of a long, repetitive reflection about the implications | ||
| 20 | of this. It is a section in which he rises to impressive heights of poetic imagery, but it would | |
| greatly benefit from the application of an editorial blue pencil. | ||
| The final part of the book is, however, even weaker. Entitled 'The Choice,' it simply tells us | ||
| that, if we are to avoid the destruction Mr Schell so gloomily prophesies, we must abandon our | ||
| existing anachronistic political system, based as it is on sovereign states concerned with the | ||
| 25 | preservation of their 'national interests', and instead fashion a new global society based on | |
| respect for human beings born and unborn, respect for the earth, and respect for God and | ||
| nature. Exactly how this should be done Mr Schell does not tell us. One calls to mind Frederick | ||
| the Great's comments on the somewhat similar proposals put forward by the Abbé St Pierre in | ||
| 1712 in his pamphlet Perpetual Peace: 'The thing is most practicable. For its success all that is | ||
| 30 | lacking is the consent of Europe and a few similar trifles.' | |
| Having stirred our consciences and aroused our expectations, Mr Schell owes it to us to | ||
| explain why the efforts that mankind has made ever since 1945 to escape from the predicament | ||
| in which we have been placed by the discovery of nuclear energy have failed , and what we | ||
| should do to avoid future failure. | ||
| 35 | It is not good enough for Mr Schell airily to leave the solution of his problem to 'others' and | |
| bustle off to write a best seller about something else. If he is truly concerned with the survival of | ||
| mankind he must stick with the job, and join those grey, unspectacular ranks of specialists, | ||
| writers and officials who are in all countries gradually working towards minimizing the dangers | ||
| facing mankind, even if they cannot eliminate them altogether. | ||
| The Sunday Times, June 20, 1982 |