AMERICAN PANIC

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 19, 2 November 1938, Page 5

AMERICAN PANIC

THE WHOLE COUNTRY SWEPT. RADIO AND EMERGENCIES. OFFICIAL INQUIRY BEGUN.

(United Press Association —Copyright.) NEW YORK, October 31.

Tho extent of the hysteria arising from the broadcast of H. G. TV ells’ play dealing with an “invasion” by the inhabitants of Mars was so groat that the “radio hoax” lias become a matter ol extreme national importance. Never in the history of the United States has such a wave of terror and panic swept the Continent. The Federal Communications Commission lias begun an inquiry, not only into the incident itself, but also into the question of wireless as the single greatest potential force for the disruption of national life in the event of a real emergency.

Observers commented that the panic could have happened only in America, and contrasted it with London’s calmness during the recent real threat of war.

A Pittsburgh business man, who returned home during the broadcast, snatched a bottle of poison from the hands of his hysterical wife. She struggled to drink the poison, screaming: “I would rather die this way than in a. war. ’ ’ Police struggled to quieten thousands of peqple who were screaming and praying in an agony of fear. Many were wearing wet cloths round their faces to counter the Martians’ gas.

Two persons died of heart failure. Fifteen cases- of shock were admitted to the Newark Hospital alone. Lights failed in a mountain town called Concrete, just as the announcer was “choked by poison gas” after making what he said might be the last broadcast ever made. All the people of Concrete took to the hills. Tho mass hysteria spread over the nation like a flame. One police station handled 4000 telephone calls within an hour, and another handled 3000. Manypeople telephoned volunteering their services. “My God!” shouted one man, “we’ve got to stop thi9 awful’thing. Doctors Volunteer Services. Scores of New York doctors and nurses volunteered. Hundreds of motoiists, picking up the reports by radio in their cars, dashed inland, disiegaiding the signal lights of the police. Many declared that they had seen Martian monsters, and described the explosions from death-ray guns as shriveling to cinders the troops sent against them. At Vrevard College, North Carolina, live students fainted. Others fought for telephones to appeal -to their parents to come and rescue them.

A weeping woman called at Princeton University for her son, crying: “Hell has broken out. It’s hot even where I am.”

Princeton professors of geology, laden with equipment, hurried to secure specimens of the meteor which was reported to have fallen in New Jersey. A woman divorce plaintiff at Reno collapsed, fearing that her husband in Now York might bo killed. Another man started east to assist the wife whom he was divorcing. Mr Orson Wells, who produced the radio play, was a little dazed. He commented: “And we were doubtful about broadcasting the play, thinking that perhaps people would be bored at listening to a story so improbable.”

Throughout the day new items .were coming in, adding more utterly fantastic details to an already seemingly too fantastic story, of individuals’ reaction through moments of great stress. “Made Plenty of People Pray.” An elderly woman at Salt Lake City, being reassured jhy telephone that the Martian attack was only a wireless .entertanfment, observed witli satisfaction: “Well, if it did noj do anything else, it certainly made plenty of people pray.” A man at Princeton, New , Jersey, receiving a telephone call in the midst of the panic, slammed down the receiver, screaming impatiently: “The world’s coming to an end and! I have a lot to do.” - A woman at Jersey City telephoned the police to ask whether she v oil Id be safe from attack if closed her windows. A group of bridge players at Union I own, Pennsylvania, went down on their knees and prayed. Members of the editorial staff of a Memphis newspaper rushed to their office prepared to issue a special edition, after they had receive*! reports that cities were being bombed and that Memphis would be next. Not all the people who believed; the broadcast reacted, hysterically. Thousand calmly volunteered to the police, soldiers, sailors, civilians, doctors and nurses all wanting to know just one thing, “Where can we be of help?” University psychology professors today have been improving the opportunity: by diagnosing the. exact reason for the panic. They agree that it arose through improper listening. It is perhaps not a bad; ease, they argue, since, had the panic-stricken listeners only remained at their radios to the end of the broadcast, they would have been completely reassured by learning that the Martians, coming from a planet where there are no microbes, were all killed by the germs of the common cold.