116 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



significance have happened. One of these is the 

 earthquake of Messina and its attendant incidents. 

 Among these incidents there is one which is, in 

 history, of such ordinary occurrence that in our 

 familiarity with it we treat it with an altogether un- 

 deserved indifference. I allude to the fact that 

 among the stricken and starving inhabitants, " fierce 

 fights with knives for bread " occurred. And, after 

 some seeming order had been restored, the distribu- 

 tion of food by the authorities took place in the pres- 

 ence and under the protection of an armed guard. 

 Where hunger presses and it cannot be satisfied, 

 blood will inevitably flow. 



The second incident is the occurrence of a fire at a 

 cinematograph exhibition in the East End of 

 London. It was apparently quite a simple and 

 not very dangerous affair. The cinematograph 

 film caught fire and made a flare altogether 

 out of proportion to its possibilities of danger. 

 According to the newspaper reports of the 

 operator's statement of the accident, the cinemato- 

 graph machine was enclosed in an iron box. None 

 the less, a panic seized the audience, and the women, 

 in their frantic endeavours to save themselves, trod 

 down the children, and the men trod down both 

 women and children in their equally frantic efforts 

 to save their threatened lives. " Each one for him- 

 self and destruction to the hindmost," expresses this 

 event. And within the past two years there have 

 been a succession of similar events. 



The third incident is a " nine-days' wonder." It 



