"Blood & Agony"

Last week near Albona, Spain, a Rolls-Royce going 87 m.p.h. careened into a culvert, turned over five times. From beneath the wreck were pulled the mangled remains of Prince Alexis Mdivani, divorced husband of Barbara Hutton. His driving companion, a German baroness, bit her tongue off, will never talk again.

Last week the Salt Lake City Tribune, under an eight-column headline. 7 L. D. S. MEMBERS DIE IN CRASH, front-paged the finding of the crushed and disfigured bodies of seven Latter Day Saints at the bottom of a 70-foot embankment over which their car had skidded.

Last week in Arbuckle. Calif, an oil truck collided with a passenger car, burst into flames. The truck driver, pinned in his cab, roasted slowly to death while helpless onlookers sprayed water on him.

Last week near Camden, S. C. a farmer's truck with nine occupants reached a railroad crossing simultaneously with a Seaboard Air Line express. Five were killed instantly; three died later in a hospital.

Last week in Laporte, Ind. Ralph R. Upton, Seattle schoolteacher who in 1912 invented the railroad crossing slogan: "Stop--Look--Listen!" crashed his automobile into a truck, killed himself & wife.

Last week New York's Police Commissioner Valentine issued a new safety campaign poster. Across the top were the words: A PRICE GREATER THAN WAR. On the left was a battle scene with the legend: "WAR--A. E. F.. 18 Months.

Killed 50,310. Wounded 182,674.'' On the right was an accident scene with the legend: "PEACE--Motor Vehicle Accidents. 18 months ended June 20, 1935. Killed 51,200. Injured 1,304,000." Few days later Commissioner Valentine's daughter and two grandchildren were cut and bruised when their car collided with a parked truck in Mineola, L. I.

Last week Reader's Digest published a noteworthy article called "--And Sudden Death." Its author was a Manhattan newshawk named Joseph C. Furnas. The article was thus prefaced: Like the gruesome spectacle of a bad automobile accident itself, the realistic details of this article will nauseate some readers. Those who find themselves thus affected at the outset are cautioned against reading this article in its entirety. . . .

Excerpts from "--And Sudden Death": "Publicizing the total of motoring in-juries--almost a million last year, with 36,000 deaths--never gets to first base in jarring the motorist into a realization of the appalling risks of motoring. He does not translate dry statistics into a reality of blood and agony.

"Figures exclude the pain and horror of savage mutilation--which means they leave out the point. . . . Even a mangled body on a [morgue] slab, waxily portraying the consequences of bad motoring judgment, isn't a patch on the scene of the accident itself. No artist working on a safety poster would dare depict that in full detail.

"That picture would have to include motion-picture and sound effects, too--the flopping, pointless efforts of the injured to stand up; the queer, grunting noises; the steady, panting, groaning of a human being with pain creeping up on him as the shock wears off. It should portray the slack expression on the face of a man, drugged with shock, staring at the Z-twist in his broken leg, the insane crumpled effect of a child's body after its bones are crushed inward, a realistic portrait of an hysterical woman with her screaming mouth opening a hole in the bloody drip that fills her eyes and runs off her chin. . . .

". . . This spring a wrecking crew pried the door off a car which had been overturned down an embankment and out stepped the driver with only a scratch on his cheek. But his mother was still inside, a splinter of wood from the top driven four inches into her brain as a result of son's taking a greasy curve a little too fast. No blood--no horribly twisted bones--just a gray-haired corpse still clutching her pocketbook in her lap as she had clutched it when she felt the car leave the road. . . .

"It's difficult to identify a body with its whole face bashed in or torn off. . . . The driver is death's favorite target. If the steering wheel holds together it ruptures his liver or spleen so he bleeds to death internally. Or. if the steering wheel breaks off. the matter is settled instantly by the steering column's plunging through his abdomen. . . .

"A trooper described an accident--five cars in one mess, seven killed on the spot, two dead on the way to the hospital, two more dead in the long run. . . . Three bodies out of one car were so soaked with oil from the crankcase that they looked like wet browrn cigars and not human at all; a man, walking around and babbling to himself, oblivious of the dead and dying, even oblivious of the dagger-like sliver of steel that stuck out of his streaming wrist; a pretty girl with her forehead laid open, trying hopelessly to crawl out of a ditch in spite of her smashed hip. A first-class massacre of that sort is only a question of scale and numbers. . . .

"A car careening and rolling down a bank, battering and smashing its occupants every inch of the way. can wrap itself so thoroughly around a tree that front and rear bumpers interlock, requiring an acetylene torch to cut them apart. ... A leg or arm stuck through the windshield will cut clean to the bone through vein, artery and muscle like a piece of beef under the butcher's knife. . . ." At the end of the article Reader's Digest announced: Convinced that widespread reading of this article will help curb reckless driving, reprints in leaflet form are offered at cost (2-c-each), with a special price of $1.50 per hundred.

To business men's organizations, women's clubs, churches, schools, automobile clubs, or other groups interested in public welfare, we suggest the idea of distributing these reprints broadcast. . . .

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.