"SAFETY FIRST" FOR WOUNDED SOLDIERS.
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By "The Inspector."
EACE ON EARTH" appears as yet to be unattainable, but the following article is intended as a seasonable suggestion for the furtherance of "goodwill towards men" broken in war on our behalf. " • Most of us will this year wish to substitute for the .eustomary care-free jollification much more temperate celebration, particularly associated with consideration in some form or another for thousands who are feeling the brunt of war conditions, through personal loss or injury, or else financially. • It will, no doubt, surprise many of us to discover the amount of solid satisfaction which this new method of celebrating Christmas time will yield. It would at first -sight appear difficult to suggest any particular manner in Which thought of this kind might be directed, in connection with the great industry with which most of us are more or less directly connected, but so farreaching are the effects of war that no branch of industrial effort is immune from the sorrows that war brings in its train. Although it so happens that the motor-vehicle industry has proved to be a mighty pillar of strength to the nation in its time of trial, resulting in extraordinary activity in the enlargement of output, the extension of factory and workshop, and The relative prosperity of workers, there are few engaged in it who, in addition to much discomfort and mental strain involved, have not, directly or indirectly, experienced actual individual anguish from the effects of the great strife. We are certain, therefore, sympathetically to consider any practical effort to relieve the discomforts of those who are broken in the war.
Is it yet fully realized that, while the present adult generation peop3es the earth, literally millions of Europeans and., indeed, also of Asiatics and Americans, will finish their courses here crippled and maimed ? Already not a few efforts, praiseworthy in the extreme, have been initiated by men and women of great public spirit to alleviate the lot of battle-scarred warriors, who will one day come back in their hordes to civilian occupation.' We' as a nation, as well as other States, will undoubtedly do our bit to provide against actual want for such men, hut, in the past, the national memory has proved to be short-lived and perilously Ungrateful in such matters, We must hope and pray that we shall have reached a more grateful and more enduring frame of mind as the result of the trials of the present years.
Above and beyond all such organized effort to look after the material well-being of countless crowds of afflicted fellow-creatures, it is to be hoped that public opinion will insist on a universal effort to ensure that all the more ordinary conditions of life are, so far as possible, re-moulded to suit the impaired powers of the wounded soldier. There will be infinite possibility for such wide-spread evidence of sympathy. There occurs to the writer one direction in which the readers of THE COMMERCIAL Murcia may particularly take an interest, and may continue to bear in mind the need for special consideration. Prefer particularly to the very certain fact that, for the rest of their lives, many hundreds of thousands, in fact millions, of men will find it difficult to travel from one place to another. The pitiful need for colossal artificial-limb organizations is not the only gauge of such widespread disability. There will be vast numbers of men enfeebled, nerve shattered and weakened, who will yet have the full use of their limbs. A11 of these will,find , it difficult, if not inipossibIe, to engage with the mob in the usual rough-and-tumble scramble for seats in
public vehicles, or in wild rushes across trafficcrowded thoroughfares, or in enduring the restrictions of crowded railway carriages and other conveyances.
We -can reasonably hope that all discharged soldiers
andsailors-., together with a certain proportion of disabled munition workers, will have removed from them any actual anxiety as to their bread and cheese or as to a roof to cover them. We may, perhaps, venture to hope that the national gratitude will be of such a character that their individual small comforts will also be a charge on the publie purse, but there are other ways of the nature indicated in which we can make things more comfortable for them. Special facilities might, without very great difficulty, be afforded on public road-motor vehicles. This might, for instance, take the form, so far as motorbuses both , urban and provincial are concerned, of occasional special vehicles timed to run at stated intervals, to which the ordinary robust and capable public should not be admitted, and on which there should be not only special facilities for entering and alighting, but also conductors and drivers, too, for that matter, who Would be charged with showing particular humane care for the shattered human loads of which they , would have to take charge. Verily, they show little for the ordinary passenger !
• It is inconceivable that the nation will allow the present disgraceful free fights to enter public vehicles to remain the conditions which wounded ex-soldiers and men with their physical capacities sapped would have to share with others still fully equipped for life's hurly-burly. Crowded lifts and platforms,. tramcars and motorbuses packed to suffocation, with straphangers perilously poised and threatening collision with other passengers already tightly wedged in adjacent seat, hustling crowds at every busy centre of population, narrow and steep staircases to the upper decks of public vehicles, insolent and bullying tube conductors, these and many other instances which appear to most people but unpleasant experiences, are well nigh, if not entirely, mendurable for the incapacitated. There must be many ways in which the conditions can be i.mproeed, if not for the general public, at least for those to whom the public owes a debt which it can never repay. We may see increased activity on the part of public highway authorities to construct either bridges with easy-approach slopes or subways similarly provided. In any case it is certain that the police, always such able traffic controllers, will in their thoughtfulness for all pedestrians in crowded thoroughfares, render great aid in these sadly new conditions to ensure ' Safety First-" for the wounded soldier.
I have written enough to suggest that there will be " many ways in which those who are interested in public traffic particularly may bear in mind the needs of the wounded soldier when new vehicle designs are contemplated, and when new traffic schemes are being developed. But there will be similar scope for those of our friends who are specifically concerned with the design and construction of the so-called touring car (although in these days such a. description is largely a misnomer) to produce vehicles which shall be particularly adapted, not only in the matter of seats, weatherproofness, wide and easy doors and carefullyplaced stops, but also in respeet of comfort and ease of control. The motor vehicle will play, if not so important a part in peace conditions as it basin war, yet a very prominent one in adding to the relative comfort of the disabled. Think it over during Christmas'