A HOLOCAUST OF INNOCENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 8

A HOLOCAUST OF INNOCENTS

The sympathy of people in all parts of the world will go but to the parents and friends of the several hundred victims of the shocking disaster at a large high school in Texas, reported yesterday. The school itself was a part of the .romance of oil which has brought such changes to wide areas in rural America. Here was originally .one of the little wooden schools typical of the United States. The discovery of oil on the school property yielded the school a royalty which enabled a great group of buildings to be erected, costing a million dollars. It was, according to the cable message, the largest and certainly the richest consolidated rural school in the world. One can imagine a similar transformation of a typical New Zealand country school in event of a similar discovery. The New London High School at Overton was in the heart of the Texas 'oil belt extending from Dallas eastward. There are twelve wells on the school property, and one can picture the forest of derricks in every direction. If oil made the school, oil was also its undoing. The main building was heated by natural gas from the nearby oilfield, probably by air-condition-ing apparatus, for the message states that there was no boiler. Gas apparently accumulated under the building and exploded when the heating apparatus was called on to meet a fall in temperature. The result was the complete destruction of the building with a loss of life estimated at over five hundred, mainly the elder pupils, for luckily the younger ones had been dismissed. The scene was rendered all the more heart-rending by the presence of many parents at a meeting in an adjacent building from which they witnessed this frightful holocaust of innocents, including in many cases their own children. There are no barriers to international sympathy in distress, and the hearts of all will go out to the afflicted and bereaved. •