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Men of Good Will. So ended the trial. Reactions ranged from complete agreement with the verdict to the feeling that justice, in some extraordinary way, must have miscarried. There were people who could not bring themselves emotionally to accept the outcome. If their minds accepted it, their stomachs did not. How could such a man be guilty of this perjury and —worse—of the betrayal of a trust which he had tried to hide by his lies? By his looks, on his record, by his accomplishments, wasn't he the picture of a decent man?
Old friends, former colleagues in the Administration, former associates in the field of foreign affairs, finding Hiss's guilt so hard to believe, refused to believe, or tried to explain how it might have come about, or simply said: "I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss."
So ended the trial. There could be no ending to the story, yet; it was, as Chambers had said, part of the "tragedy of history" and of the conflict in which modern society was absorbed. Hiss and Chambers, if the evidence could be believed, had been caught in the tragedy. Two intellectuals, they had been lured by Communism's fair promises, had seen its evil face too late.
It was a face that disguised itself behind the mask of humanitarianism, and lost itself in the crowd. Men of good will on the left often did not recognize it in their midst; other men of good will, farther to the right politically, often did not discriminate between the face of the enemy and honest liberalism. The face had to be sought out, isolated from the people it traveled with—without harming the innocent, who would have to keep their eyes open as well as their hearts.