"Epidemic" Averted

P: In Chicago last week, Casper Rusnak, 35, Mrs. Winska Rusnak, 30, were arrested and charged with the murder of their daughter Helen, two years old. Casper Rusnak was drunk. Winska Rusnak, once insane, admitted that she had shot her daughter, but could not say why.

P:In Brooklyn, Mrs. Helen Iwinski, mother of three, called Joseph Iwinski, 16, her feeble-minded eldest son, into the kitchen. Tired of his being mocked and scorned, with fierce love for her weakest child, she poured out two cups of poison. One she gave to Joseph, one she drank herself. Mother and son died.

P: In Manhattan, Mrs. Elizabeth Hendrickson called her two sons. Like Spartans preparing for death, she dressed her children in their best clothes, washed their faces, brushed their hair, took them into the kitchen, locked the door and turned on the gas. Neighbors rescued the three before they had time to die. . . .

As all newsreaders know, last winter was the time when college boys, inspired by a dark and Faustian hunger, killed themselves by dozens. They know it because every time any college student committed suicide, the fact was bellowed from the front page of every U.S. newsheet. In a period when news was scarce, space was filled by the details of an imaginary "epidemic." Editors soon came to believe in their hoax and wrote articles showing how too much philosophy was being inserted into callow brains. Educators were faced with a grave dilemma, when it seemed probable that the death rate of colleges would exceed applications for entrance. Soon came the Hall-Mills and Snyder-Gray murder cases, and the "youth suicide wave" was forgotten.

Last week it seemed that there was to be an epidemic of new and more gruesome aspect. The World's Series was unexpectedly over, Congress still adjourned, transoceanic airplanes were being trundled into hangars, bootleggers were plying their trade without undue interference, the waters of the world were a quiet silver and the same winds that had pounced upon a great city now mewed like gentle cats. But three U. S. mothers had killed or tried to kill their children. Three is a crowd, four is an epidemic. Grubby, cutthroat editors, eager to mountainize and multiply such small and terrible tragedies, chewed thick pencils, chuckled, thumped their desks, squealed: "If only we get another like that ... if only there was one more. . . ."