THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 
289 
warm American heart for human suffer- 
ing; that the makers of this great canal 
are putting some of the earnings of their 
labors into work for their fehow-men. 
But we may not hnger, for the wind 
sweeps us onward to the east, and our 
Flying Carpet hardly pauses for us to 
glance below at Tripoli, where last win- 
ter the Red Cross helped many Jewish 
victims of cholera and famine, before 
again it wings its flight to Montenegro 
to show us for a moment the Albanian 
refugees, for whose relief our Red Cross 
sent funds to the Montenegrin Red 
Cross, which did so much in their behalf. 
Again our winged steed hurries us 
onward to the land of its own beloved 
Koran and lingers over Stamboul to 
recall to us that here our Red Cross lent 
a friendly hand to the suffering Mussul- 
men when the fire last year laid so much 
of their city in ashes. Neither race nor 
creed does the Red Cross know ; only 
suffering humanity. 
A word to the wind, for our time is 
brief, and it carries us swiftly away to 
the far eastern isles, where floats a flag 
we know and love. There from the pic- 
turesque lake in southern Luzon rises 
that strange but deadly little volcano of 
Mt. Taal. 
Only last March, like some monstrous 
dragon, it quivered and muttered, and 
then early one morning poured forth 
with blasts of fire and ashes its venom- 
ous fumes to overwhelm the people of a 
score of tiny villages clustered along the 
shore. Over 1,300 were destroyed in a 
moment's time, and the green and trop- 
ical hills and valleys turned into a bar- 
ren waste of gray desolation. Accepting 
only $1,000 from our Red Cross treasury 
here, the Philippine Chapter raised four- 
teen thousand more, with which it cared 
for those who escaped the fury of the 
devastating volcano. 
Turning, now, northward in our flight, 
let us stop for a moment at Manila to 
gather up Dr. Strong and his assistant, 
Dr. Teague, that we may see at Mukden 
the field of their labors for the Red 
Cross. We, safely up aloft, may watch 
them in the heart of the pneumonic 
plague district, dressed like misericordia 
brothers, moving through hospital and 
laboratory, studying at the risk of their 
own lives this most fatal pestilence — 
studying it so well that when the inter- 
national commission meets Dr. Strong 
proves its leading member in the suc- 
cessful suppression of the epidemic. 
Does the wind with a moaning note 
warn us of sorrow and despair as it 
drives us southward? Creep to the cen- 
ter of our jeweled carpet that you may 
not glance over its gold-fringed borders, 
or else steel your hearts to the saddest 
scene of all, so appalling in its vastness 
of human misery, in the depths of human 
suffering. 
Once more last winter famine stalked 
through central China, and again today 
its deadly grasp is laid upon hundreds of 
thousands of men, women, and children. 
Up and down the highways wander a 
starving multitude. Here a man wasted 
by hunger, carrying a dying mother from 
some distant village, stops to beat his 
head on the doorstep of a house as he 
begs in vain for work or food. There a 
gaunt, hollow-eyed woman holds a fam-, 
ished baby to her breast, while clinging 
to her skirts are pitiful children, whose 
little legs tremble as they walk, in the 
weary search for aid. Think of the 
mental agony of such men and women 
who must witness helplessly the suffer- 
ings of those they love. In desperation 
some of these honest farming-folk have 
become robbers and plunderers ; hun- 
dreds of them every month forfeit their 
lives for their crimes. The children that 
survive are growing up to lives of beg- 
gary and vagrancy, so often has famine 
succeeded famine. 
Not content with its efforts to alleviate 
some of this untold suffering, our Red 
Cross last spring offered to the Chinese 
government the services of an expert 
engineer on river conservancy to study 
and report on the prevention of the 
floods that cause those oft-repeated fam- 
ines. For six months Mr. Jameson, the 
Red Cross engineer, with 30 bright Chi- 
nese assistants provided by the Chinese 
government, has been at work on the 
Yellow River, or Hwai River. 
It is satisfactory to learn from his 
preliminary reports that he believes the 
building of power dikes and the deep- 
