Under the Red Cross flag at home and abroad (1915) (14781622562)

Identifier: 02820440R.nlm.nih.gov

Title: Under the Red Cross flag at home and abroad

Year: 1915 (1910s)

Authors: Boardman, Mabel Thorp, 1860-1946, author

Subjects: Red Cross Relief Work

Publisher:

Contributing Library: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons, U.S. National Library of Medicine

Text Appearing Before Image:

ngers of starvation when over the fertilevalley of the Huai River, the granary of the Empire,the river and shallow lakes flood thousands of squaremiles of cultivated lands. No other words can I findto describe even faintly famine conditions than thosewritten last year for the Red Cross Magazine: Picture if you can, the sufferings of hundreds ofthousands of human beings. Their houses sold for alittle food or burned by bits for a little warmth, thefarms flooded—water-soaked, the unharvested, rottedgrain—these wretched people are driven, a pathetic pil-grimage, to the large cities. Scantily clad, with hungerwritten on their pallid faces, one sees the man bearingas best he can the emaciated form of some old father ormother; the woman, her wailing baby pressed to a breastthat has no nourishment to give it, and her little childrenclinging to her dress to help their weak and tremblingsteps. They stop by the way to grub from the muddyearth a few roots or tear from the trees a few handfuls

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DRAINAGE AND RECLAMATION 201 of bark to stay for a moment tlie pangs of their bitterhunger, no matter what the sufferings that may arisefrom food that is not food and that serves only to fillthe empty, craving stomachs. Occasionally one dropsby the roadside. Nature, which fights so hard for humanlife, gives up. Covering his face, the others leave himthere alone, pushing on with weary hearts and feeblebodies, whither they hardly know. To the miseries of physical suffering must be addedthe mental anguish of watching those they love hungerand die. The hands of the children upstretched for foodshe cannot give, their hungry eyes, their tremblingbodies and pitiful cries tear the mothers heart with apain no words can describe. Moral degradation follows.Honest men become desperate, and in their desperationturn to robbery, brigandage and murder. In prisonone may have food, and better far die by the swift handof the executioner than by the slow torture of starva-tion. Since 1907 the American Re

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1915

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