The Night of the Summer Solstice

PERHAPS if we had more such stories as these Mr. van Doren has gathered about Russians and their ordeal, we Americans might comprehend the meaning of war. Casualties reported in terms of planes, tanks, and guns lost are meaningless to the common man. He needs a Horatius at the bridge, a Molly Pitcher, a Sergeant York, to bring war to the world he understands. In these stories, which are of varying literary value, there is a wealth of just such heroism. The two Red naval officers steering their ship to safety through a mined sea, the aging nurse who wins a burned soldier back to life by allowing him to believe her young and beautiful, Leonard the barber violinist who loses his hands while he keeps the victims trapped in an airraid shelter thinking that aid is coming to them — these are the noble figures that bring the war and its human equation painfully close.