TERROR & PANIC

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1938, Page 5

TERROR & PANIC

WILD WAVE OF HYSTERIA IN UNITED STATES CAUSED BY BROADCAST OF PLAY FEARS OF MARTIAN INVASION. FEDERAL COMMISSION OPENS INQUIRY. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. NEW YORK, October 31. The extent of the hysteria arising from the broadcast yesterday of H. G. Wells’s play, “The War of the Worlds,” which was interpreted by listeners as being an actual news bulletin of an invasion from Mars was so great that the radio hoax has become a matter of 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 has 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 calm during the recent real threat of war. Throughout the day news items were coming in adding more utterly fantastic details to the already seemingly too fantastic story of individuals' reaction in the moments of great stress. An elderly lady at Salt Lake City, being reassured by telephone that the Martian attack was only a wireless entertainment, observed with satisfaction: “Well, if it did not 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 would be safe from attack if she closed the windows. A group of bridge players at Union Town, Pennsylvania, went down, on their knees and prayed. GETTING OUT THE NEWS. Members of the editorial staff of a Memphis newspaper rushed to the office prepared to issue- a special edition after they had received reports that cities were being bombed and that Memphis would be the next. A Pittsburg business man returned during the broadcast and snatched a bottle of poison from his hysterical wife’s hands. She struggled to drink the poison, screaming: “I would rather die this way than in war.” Police struggled to quiet thousands of people who were screaming and praying mtn agony of fear. Many were wearing wet cloths round their faces to counter the Martian’s gas. Two people died of heart failure, and fifteen cases of shock were admitted to Newark Hospital alone. Lights failed in a mountain town called Concrete just as the announcer choked by poison gas after making what he said might be the last broadcast ever made. All Concrete took to the hills.

THOUSANDS OF VOLUNTEERS. Mass hysteria spread over the nation like a flame. One police station handled four thousand telephone calls within an hour. Another three thousand. Many rang up volunteering their services. “My God,” shouted one man, “we’ve got to stop this awful thing.” Scores of New York doctors and nurses volunteered. Hundreds of motorists, picking up reports by radio in their cars, dashed inland, disregarding signal lights. Many declared that they had seen Martian monsters and described explosions from the death-ray guns which shrivelled the troops sent against them to cinders. At Brevard College. North Carolina, five students fainted and others fought for phones 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 reported to have fallen at Duchneck. A woman' divorce plaintiff at Reno collapsed, fearing that her husband in New York had been killed, while a man started east to aid his wife whom he was divorcing. A DAZED PRODUCER. Orson Welles, Who produced the play, was a little dazed. He commented: “And we were doubtful about broadcasting the play, thinking perhaps that people would be bored listening to a story so improbable.”

Interestingly enough, not all the people who believed the broadcast reacted hysterically., Thousands calmly volunteered to the police, soldiers, sailors, civilians, doctors and nurses, all wanting tb know just one thing: “Where can we be of help?” University psychology professors have, today been improving the occasion by diagnosing the exact reason for the panic. They agree that it was due to improper listening. It is perhaps not a bad case which they make but, since, had the panicstricken listeners only remained at their radios till the end of the broadcast, they would have been completely reassured that the Martians, coming from a planet where there are no microbes, were all killed by the germs of the common cold.