Australian Scare

Thousands of South Australians,* peacefully replete with dinner, tuned their radio sets idly one evening last week to pick up Station 5-CL at Adelaide. A little jazz, they thought, might assist digestion; and at worst there would be the weather report and a bedtime tale. Suddenly, as Station 5-CL came in on loud speakers and head phones, the digestion of numerous listeners was upset by a shock so powerful that Adam's apples bounded in male throats and robust women clutched at their hearts.

Australia was being invaded by a fleet of hostile airplanes, said Station 5-CL. The planes had just been sighted, pouncing and swooping in from the North. A few moments later the station told that the invading air navy was dropping poison gas bombs, flame throwers, and showers of poisoned darts. For ten minutes the vision of horror and destruction was conjured up with more and more terrifying realism. Then Station 5-CL blandly announced that there was not one word of truth in its "program," which had merely been put on "because of complaints that the usual features offered by our regular artists have been growing stereotyped and dull. . . ."

Those who heard this last announcement chuckled or swore, then retired to a peaceful repose. Not so did hundreds who had not listened to the end, but instead had rushed from their homes, leaped into motor cars, and dashed for remote wooded places where they could hide unnoticed.

All night telephone girls answered frantic calls. Policemen and fire brigades scurried out to stop the rush away from cities which might be bombed. Twenty-four hours after the original announcement many families were still in hiding. . . .

Australian editors in the vicinity of Adelaide flayed Station 5-CL for this prank. Some observed, however, that "it may teach the nation a much-needed lesson in preparedness."

* South Australia, with a population of 543,122, ranks fourth most populous among the eight states and territories which comprise the Continent: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, North Territory and Federal Capital Territory. Although the area of Australia (2,974,581 sq. mi.) is about two-thirds that of the U. S., the total population (5,929,288) is only slightly more than that of New York City (5,873,366). * Regions North of Australia are: British Siberia; and the Union of Socialist Soviet Islands ; Japan ; Korea ; China ; Manchuria ; Siberia; and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics.