ercussions, the
Commission to Combat Dangerous Vegetation decided on one of the least
awesome bombs in the catalogue. Just a little bomb--hardly more than a
toy, a plaything, the very smallest practicable--ought to allay all
fears and set everyone's mind at rest. If it were effective, a bigger
one could be employed, or numbers of smaller ones.

This much being settled, there was still the question of where to
initiate the attack. Edge or heart? Once more there was controversy, but
it lacked the enthusiasm remembered by veterans of the salt argument; a
certain lassitude in debate was evident as though too much excitement
had been dissipated on earlier hopes, leaving none for this one. There
was little grumbling or soreness when the decision was finally confirmed
to let fall the bomb on what had been Long Beach.

When I read of the elaborate preparations being made to cover the great
event, of the special writers, experts, broadcasters, cameramen, I was
thankful indeed I was no longer a newspaperman, arbitrarily to be
ordered aloft or sent aboard some erratic craft offshore on the bare
chance I might catch a comprehensive or distinctive enough glance of the
action to repay an editor for my discomfort. Instead, I sat contentedly
in my apartment and listened to the radio.

Whether our expectations had been too high or whether all the
eyewitnesses became simultaneously inept, I must say the spot broadcast
and later newspaper and magazine accounts were uniformly disappointing.
It was like the hundredth repetition of an oftentold story. The flash,
the chaos, the mushroomcloud, the reverberation were all in precise
order; nothing new, nothing startling, and I imagine the rest of the
country, as I did, turned away from the radio with a distinct feeling of
having been let down.

First observation through telescope and by airplanes keeping a
necessarily cautious distance, showed the bomb had destroyed a patch of
vegetation about as large as had been expected. Though not spectacular,
the bombing had apparently been effective on a comparatively small
segment and it was anticipated that as soon as it was safe to come close
and confirm this, the action would be repeated on a larger scale. While
hundreds more of the baby bombs, as they were now affectionately called,
were ordered and preparations made systematically to blast the grass out
of existence, the aerial observers kept swooping in closer and closer
with cameras trained to