No Bonanza?

The winding roads that run through the smiling hills near Dover, N. J., were populated with sadness; no laughter broke through the stillness; even the pudgy children, bronzed as rust, trotted, wondrously solemn, beside their stolid Slavic folk. Short-statured women, sunburned, stocky men, trudged ploddingly, bewilderedly, home. Whispers. Tears. Vague muddle.

Two weeks ago shattering explosions had prostrated their cottages, snorted through their gardens, shells from the lightning-struck U. S. arsenal mutilating kin, pigs, treasures. (TIME, July 19.)

Over at the arsenal crawling soldiers and marines had squirmed through the charred ashes of leveled buildings, grasses, companions. Any moment a shell might explode, but most of the firing had ceased after 48 hours. Here a marine sifted, and as the grit drizzled through his sieve, he spied a black, circular object. A ring. Spattered on his shoes lay the reliquae of a ghost. Over in Brooklyn, at the Navy morgue, officers shook their heads. One cannot identify dismembered legs with fingerprints. The bodies had been found thick around the first powder magazine which exploded --bodies of heroic soldiers who had defied an exploding arsenal with water buckets. Little metal knicknacks were pondered on with shrugging shoulders. Unidentified. Meanwhile, other Navy committees investigate God's act.

In the villages refugee gentry told: "Before we knew it the explosion came and blew out our windows. Glass cut me, and my wife's face was crimson with cuts. . . . Our baby was knocked to the floor and killed by a falling chunk of wood. . . . My son has lost his sight, my daughter was lacerated. . . . Blood was pouring from a dozen wounds in my back made by small pieces of shrapnel."

Perhaps 900 refugees in all were whipped from their homes by the tornado of shell fire, ambushed by "duds," harried by whining bullets.

The reports of the committees investigating the disaster have not yet been published. Can their report explain why the Government did not place the magazines under ground, where danger would have been minimized? Can they discount the contention of Professor Pupin of Columbia University, as given by Hearst-Editor Brisbane, that sheet copper roofings connected by huge copper bands directly with wet earth would have frustrated even this "act of God?" The system of lightning rod protectors at Lake Denmark is obviously inefficient. The Government controls immense voltages of electricity at Niagara Falls; why have not engineers sought a method to control electrical attacks on the concentrated sudden death at Dover? Were the officials negligent in permitting habitation near the arsenal? Will new storage plants be situated at Dover? Will serious attempt be made to safeguard them against lightning? Will the 21 other arsenals along the U. S. seacoasts and borders be modernized ?

To date more than 20 bodies have been recovered. Many cannot be identified. Among the injured are many score citizens who are returning to their demolished homesteads. The horrors of the whole holocaust are principally borne by them, without redress against the Government. Despite this, a message, signed by the Rotary Club, and approved by the Kiwanis Club, the American Legion, the Business Men's Association, and the Mayor's Committee of Dover protested indignantly when it was suggested that perhaps it would be better to remove the arsenal to some distant region, take away from the merchant's their bonanza of soldier trade.