Mt. Benger Mail WEDNESDAY, NOV. 9, 1938 Be Just and Fear Not. THE “MARTIAN” BROADCAST

Mt Benger Mail, 9 November 1938, Page 3

Mt. Benger Mail WEDNESDAY, NOV. 9, 1938 Be Just and Fear Not. THE “MARTIAN” BROADCAST

An elderly woman at Salt Lake City, being reassured by telephone that the Martian attack was only wireless entertainment, observed with satisfaction; “Well, if it did not do anything else it certainly made plenty of people pray. The recent chaotic panic produced on the Atlantic seaboard of the U.'S.A. by a radio broadcast shows what unbelievably gullibility can be inspired by fear. People in such circumstances accept every fantasy apparently, without the slightest recourse to ordinary commonsense. Granted that with American expertness in these matters the “Martian invasion” seemed unusually authentic, there is still little reason why, in the absence of concrete evidence, the voice of one man should cause an intelligent people to take such astounding leave of their senses. The best excuse is possibly the fact that in all ages, fear has ever been a remarkable stimulant to the imagination.

Yet folly usually administers a sharp correction —it apparently did so in this case —the striking feature being the widespread appeal to God for deliverance. People who previously thought themselves quite capable of guiding their own destines, had perforce to acknowledge their actual insignifiauce, and invoke the aid of. a Higher Being. This omniscience is so generally overlooked that is perhaps no pity that many were forced to spend a night of anguish and unrest to arrive at a realisation of it. . , It would be <a comfort indeed, it in the present world, all for alarm were as happily chimerical, and as unfortunately they are not, it is incumbent on us to recall the solace expressed in Tennyson’s I words that

“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams. ’ ’ With customary readiness to satarise themselves the Americans will doubtless soon make light of the whole affair, but it is to be hoped that the salutary moral effect will not be <as lightly dismissed.