The Washington herald., 1916-09-11
Safety First. /"
BY JOHN ID. BARRY.

| ID.
The number of serious accidents to people in
this country, often involving loss of human life
| is appalling But ! wonder if they to be
wondered at, in view of our ways of living
As civilization grows more complex the reqSjre-
ments on the mental and physical agility oi
human beings are bound to increase There are
| certain inventions greatly adding to the con-
venience of living, that carry with them inevitable
death to vast numbers. When the steam engine
arrived 1t brought new and fearful menace
to human life, as any one could have foreseen
There must have been many who, for this reason
wished to see it banned and barred. But they
might as well have resisted the ocean tides or
the rising of the sun. The automobile brought
inevitable disaster, and for the aeroplane, think
of the havoc bound to be associated with its
development, great caravans of passengers sacri-
feed without single escape
The best that can be done to keep the agencies
of danger from harming people is to hedge those
agencies about with all reasonable safeguards
To>hedge them about with all possible safeguards
might be seriously to cripple their usefulness in
some instances to destroy it altogether. Abso-
lutte security is, of course, impossible, a circum-
stance, by the way, often forgotten in the human
desire to find a definite cause and focus for
censure. Emergencies are continually arising
that could not have been foreseen, fascinating
studies for the psychologist with his passion for
discovering the law at work, all the more inter
esting for being obscure.
Recently at ball game l saw dramatic
accident that might have had very serious re-
suits, an accident by no means unfamiliar to
lovers of baseball, sometimes preventable, at
other times unpreventable. The man at the
bat sent fly between center field and right
field. Two players ran for il. In the excite
ment they could not hear the voice of the captain
and kept going till with terrific force, they
rushed against each other and fell to the ground
That accident was of the mischances of the
game, like many another accident resulting from
conditions in themselves harmless. 1t was not
demerit, but merit that each of those players
was too absorbed in his work to safeguard him
self
There is danger not only in careessness but
in caution as we'll. l remember how, many years
ago, when I first visited London, I used to go
about with voluble Londoner who would talk
even while we were crossing the most crowded
thoroughfares At first his apparent indifference
to his surroundings made think that he might
at any moment be run down. But he had a
kind of genius for lodging, an observation, ap-
parently subconscous that gave him absolute
poise and the security almost certain to go with
poise. He was safe in the turmoil of Charng
Cross as he would have been at home.
1t IS the insecure people, the timid and the
faltering that most likely to be the victims
of accidents They in even greater danger
than the reckless. Their very sense of insecurity
often makes them act as if they were reckless
In emergencies many of them will helplessly
abandon themselves to chance They cannot CO.
operate with the speed about them by means OF
the necessary agility.
Here it seems to me is the real cause of the
situation that inspires so many people to cry
Safety First" 1t is our American mania for
speed Behind it lies a complication of false
ideals, which makes us the wonder and the
amusement and the despair of foreign visitors
betraying themselves in self-assertion, vanity
display, hurry, noise and excitement What is the
use of warning the public against the expression
of forces so powerful, a public that is
close to influences directly opposed to those
forces, quietly asserting the value of the more
truly democratic ideals of self-restraint, of re-
serve and of tolerance, all subordinating the good
OF the individual for the good of the community
And, by the paradox which is the justification OF
democracy, making the good of the individual all
the easier of attainment