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Written in 1942 when the outcome of the Second World War was still far off and the weighted considerations on the different behavioral lines followed by the various countries involved in the conflict had not yet been made, "The Moon Has Set" is a clear analysis of the fundamental difference between free will, between the claim to the choice of a free people ("we have as many heads as there are people and in moments of need leaders spring up among us like mushrooms" p. 113) that can decide to continue fighting and resisting even in defeat, and the herd man, follower of a single leader, who cannot do so because he is not authorized to act autonomously. The herd man is comfortable when he hears himself addressed like this: "you must receive orders and execute them. Most of the orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business." (p.106). And this can lead men who even say to their adversary "only for a while, can't we talk to each other like friends" and "I'm only here until I get sick of it" (p. 79), to the elimination of millions of people not during - albeit bloody - military actions in the field, but as a result of an order derived from a cold calculation at the table for the pure thirst for supremacy. "The Moon Has Set" is a hymn to the individuality of choice. The community among men is not created by the awareness of belonging to a single squadron but by the dignity that the choice to act according to principles of justice confers, even at the cost of one's own life. The lives of Mayor Orden, Doctor Winter, the young Alex will not be so wasted for an abstract principle, but will be worth as an example to incite others not to bow their heads, so that the invasion never becomes a conquest, but stops only at a fragile dominion exercised by force.
