Read Ebook: The American Red Cross Bulletin (Vol. IV No. 2 April 1909) by American National Red Cross

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The report of the Red Cross Christmas Stamp is given in this number, showing how this little stamp of good cheer has accomplished a very good and widespread mission.

A report of the Red Cross work at the time of the Inauguration will be given in the July BULLETIN.

Our people give so liberally when disaster arouses their sympathy, but may we not hope that the time will soon come when, by gifts and legacies to its Endowment Fund, our American Red Cross may be possessed of such a certain income that it can "continue and carry on a system of national and international relief in time of peace, and apply the same in mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry on measures for preventing the same." according to its charter, and have always funds on hand with which to render first aid when disasters occur, without having to wait until contributions are received.

The patriotic men and women of other countries have given millions of dollars in small and large donations and legacies to the permanent funds of their Red Cross societies. Will not our men and women show an equally patriotic and humane spirit by doing the same for the American Red Cross?

THE SICILIAN AND CALABRIAN EARTHQUAKE

"Messina and Reggio destroyed by an earthquake" flashed over the wires and appeared in our press the last days of the year. The terrible news, with its story of the fearful loss of life and property, seemed too appalling to be true. The world, though stunned by its magnitude, was yet to learn that no pen could describe the horrors of a disaster unparalleled in modern history, and that only those who saw the scene of devastation soon after the catastrophe have any realization of its terrible results. As for those who lived through the earthquake and escaped, the mental fear and physical agony they had undergone left their minds dazed and blank. When some realization of the truth dawned upon the world a wave of sympathy was awakened everywhere. It is especially for such times of disaster that the Red Cross has its being, and the call for help was immediately issued from headquarters at Washington. The President and Governors of States were notified that our National Society was ready to receive and transmit the contributions our people were glad to make for suffering Italy. President Roosevelt, in his cables to the King of Italy, expressing his own and his countrymen's sympathy, stated that the "American Red Cross has issued an appeal for the sufferers." Many Governors of States issued proclamations, asking that all contributions be sent through the American Red Cross. How promptly and how generously, our people expressed their sympathy in tangible shape is known everywhere. Glad were we in America to do what we could to help our suffering fellow-men in beautiful and well-loved Italy. Something of what the American Red Cross, our national member of that greatest of all institutions of international brotherhood, has been able to do with the contributions it has received is told in this BULLETIN by those who in Italy have helped to administer the funds. In all of this work the Society has had the most valuable and untiring assistance of Mr. Lloyd Griscom, the American Ambassador at Rome. It cannot too strongly express its appreciation of all that he has accomplished in the line of careful and prompt use of the money it has sent. What our Red Cross has accomplished has been done with a sincere desire to be of help, with a deep appreciation of the complex and difficult problem Italy has had and still has to face, and with the hope that the wounds of this beautiful country, so recently devastated by this terrible calamity, may soon be healed and the people re-established in a happy and prosperous life.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ITALIAN RED CROSS

Knowing that the Italian Red Cross was especially well organized for carrying on hospital relief work, because of its field hospitals, fourteen hospital trains and equipment for two ships' hospitals, besides an active personnel, the American Red Cross transmitted to it through our Ambassador at Rome 0,000 to be applied to its relief work in the earthquake district. The Italian Red Cross, in two previous Calabrian earthquakes and at the time of the Vesuvian eruption, maintained a number of hospitals and relief stations. At the time of the latter disaster the American Red Cross received about ,000, which was transmitted to the Italian Red Cross. Later a special report was made by this Society of the relief work it performed at that time. A report of the relief operations in Southern Italy will doubtless be issued sometime in the future, but this must not be expected too soon, as experience has taught how long drawn out is relief work after serious disasters. Baron Mayor des Planches, the Italian Ambassador at Washington, in speaking of the Italian Red Cross, said:

"As the representative of the Italian Government, I desire to give the strongest indorsement of the Italian Red Cross, with which the American Red Cross is in the most intimate relation, and to say that my Government places absolute confidence in this great national organization."

On January 4, the following cablegram was received from Count Taverna:

"The Italian Red Cross tenders sincerest thanks to American Red Cross for conspicuous contribution of 1,538,500 Italian lire, received through American Ambassador in Rome, toward the relief of the distressed districts of Reggio, Calabria and Messina, and begs to express its keen appreciation of the feelings of solidarity and warm sympathy with the stricken populations, which have prompted their generous act.

"COUNT TAVERNA, President Italian Red Cross."

Since this despatch was received further remittances have been made, bringing the total of the American Red Cross contributions to the Italian Red Cross up to 0,000.

THE AMERICAN RED CROSS ORPHANAGE

Hundreds of little children were left fatherless and motherless amidst the ruins of Messina and Calabria. Scores of them were even too young to be able to give any information in regard to themselves or their families. For years these must be cared for, and having been left without property or relatives, must be so educated that, after reaching mature years, they will be able to support themselves. Helpless childhood appeals strongly to everyone, and the Red Cross, which after great calamities aims when the first temporary aid is over, to rehabilitate and place again upon their feet the victims of the disasters, was ready to accept the suggestion of the Italian Government that some of the funds entrusted to its administration by the American people should be devoted to the maintenance of an agricultural colony in Sicily or Calabria for the care of a hundred or more of the orphaned children. In national relief the American Red Cross does not permit the use of its emergency funds for the purpose of any permanent endowments, but in international relief it believes it wisest to act under the suggestion of the American diplomatic representative, the Government and relief committees in the country where the disaster occurs. Therefore, when Mr. Griscom, the Ambassador at Rome, after consulting with the Italian Government, asked that such an agricultural orphanage colony be maintained by a donation from the American Red Cross, the suggestion was promptly complied with. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars are to be devoted to this purpose.

The colony will be situated in Sicily or Calabria, and will consist of model farms, where scientific agricultural instructions will be given by agents of the Royal University of Agriculture. The Italian Government will furnish the land, and the Italian National Relief, under the patronage of Queen Helena will provide the buildings. It will be called "The American Red Cross Orphanage," and the American Ambassador is to be an ex-officio member of its governing committee. It is to be a lay institution, and not ecclesiastical. A yearly budget of its expenses will be published, which must meet the approval of the Minister of the Interior, who at present is also the Prime Minister. A number of the poor women left widows and dependent by the earthquake, and who in many cases also lost their little children, will be given employment at this orphanage, and the care of other little children will help to lift this sorrow from their hearts. From these women the children will receive again much of that mother-love and care of which this terrible disaster has robbed them.

Speaking of this orphanage, Mr. Griscom writes on February 19 to the chairman of the Central Committee of the American Red Cross:

"I can assure you that this generous gift of the American Red Cross has made a profound impression in Italy. I made the formal presentation to Her Majesty, the Queen, on the 16th instant, and Her Majesty was overcome with emotion and for a moment at loss to express herself. Finally she made a beautiful speech and poured forth her admiration for the organization of the American Red Cross."

Ambassador Griscom, under date of February 18, forwarded to the State Department for transmission to the American Red Cross two letters from the Countess Spaletti Rasponi, the President of the Patronato Regina Elena, and from the Honorable Bruno Chimirri, President of the "Comitato di Vigilanza," respectively, expressing the gratitude of the Committee and Council of the Patronato Regina Elena for the gift of 0,000, for the establishment of the Orphanage. The letters referred to follow:

"EXCELLENCY:

"The Council of the 'Opera Nazionale di Patronato Regina Elena,' having known of the conspicuous offer of 1,300,000 lire made by the American National Red Cross in favor of the children whom the recent earthquake has thrown into the condition of orphans, has passed a vote of thanks to the officers and to Your Excellency, to whose influential interest it is due if so important a part of the funds collected in America has been devoted to our institution.

"And I, interpreting the desire of the Council, warmly and specially beg Your Excellency to kindly transmit to the meritorious American Red Cross the expression of our profound and heartfelt gratitude toward all the noble and great American nation, not inferior to any other in all the manifestations of human genius and solidarity.

"With the assurances of my highest consideration,

"MR. AMBASSADOR:

"I have the honor to offer you the warmest thanks of the Committee and Council of the 'Opera Nazionale di Patronato Regina Elena' for the generous offer which you have made on behalf of the Calabrian and Sicilian orphans.

"I beg you to be good enough to be interpreter of our very grateful sentiments to the American Red Cross, which has completed, with its splendid gift, its relief work in Calabria and Sicily.

"The Agricultural Colony, which will be named American Red Cross Orphanage,' will perpetuate the remembrance of this charity, and will contribute to render continually more close the ancient ties of sympathy and friendship which unite Italy with your mighty Republic, ties which you called attention to in your brilliant speech on the occasion of the centenary of the great President Lincoln.

"Accept, Mr. Ambassador, the assurances of my high consideration.

"To His Excellency, "Hon. Lloyd C. Griscom, "Ambassador of the United States of America, Rome."

HOUSES FOR ITALY

Ex-Governor Guild on January 26 informed the Red Cross that forty-nine portable houses could be obtained in Massachusetts from the Springfield Portable Construction Company. These were purchased for ,978, and shipped on one of the vessels carrying the government lumber directly to Messina, without expense. The Springfield Portable Construction Company kindly returned to the Red Cross 0 of the payment made on these houses as their contribution for the relief work.

As the Congressional appropriation has been entirely expended for house materials and the chartering of ships, the American Red Cross, besides expending ,000 for the erection of the houses it has sent over, has transmitted ,000 to pay for the erection of the houses to be made from the materials purchased and shipped by the United States Government.

EARLY DAYS OF RELIEF

BY W. BAYARD CUTTING, JR.

Special Representative of the American National Red Cross.

We saw what the traveler to Messina has seen through the centuries--one of the beautiful places of the earth bathed in the light of the rising sun. We were close to the shore, it is true, and could make out the ruins. The palaces fronting along the stately Marina were roofless. There were gaps between the palaces--white heaps of debris. Toppling buildings, and houses without outer walls, like children's doll houses, could be made out. Here and there out of a roof came flames and curling smoke. But to see all this one had to look for it. What attracted the eye, and compelled attention through the magical appeal of its beauty, was a broad expanse of still water, protected from the sea by a projecting point of land; then a flat water front, two or three miles long; and behind, circle after circle of hills, bewildering in their rich variety of form and color. This was the real Messina, you felt, what an ancient phraseology would call its formal and final causes. With those fertile hills, with this spacious harbor, situated on a principal trade route, Messina would always be a city. Houses and inhabitants there would always be to embody the Messina idea, to fulfill the Messina purpose.

This apathy of the native population, amounting to a kind of stupor, since it abolished even begging, stood out sharply before us, when we went ashore, in contrast to the activity of the military forces. As we turned to the left down the long Marina--we had landed near the northern extremity of the town and it was clear that the center of things was far to the south--the way was so crowded that we could not walk more than two abreast, and were often obliged to fall into single file. The Marina is a broad promenade along the water's edge; but at least half its width was blocked with debris from the palaces at the back; and on the water side the way was stopped by impediments of all kinds; piles of lumber, blanket heaps and rude huts put up for temporary shelter--tarpaulins spread over poles, for the most part. As we walked down the middle, picking our way among the cracks and fissures in the ground, we were constantly making way for troops of soldiers with spades and pick-axes over their shoulders. Almost equally numerous were the parties bearing long lines of litters. They were marching in our direction or else out of side streets to our right; and as they passed we looked nervously at each burden, to see whether the face was uncovered. Sometimes it was; occasionally even the occupant of the litter was raised on his elbow, staring with uncomprehending curiosity at the crowd on either side. More often no face was exposed; then we knew that the man was one of those dead who encumbered the path to the living. No bodies were touched, we knew, unless they actually impeded the work of rescue. Otherwise they must be left alone; the living had the first claim. Yet the line of litters was unending.

On our right the view of the town was screened by a line of fairly intact house fronts. The principal palaces of Messina had flanked the Marina; their outer walls had resisted bravely, on the whole. Such glimpses as we got of the interiors made it clear that those walls were mere shells; still they gave to the Marina a deceptive appearance of solidity. Between the palaces, however, came long heaps of mere debris, thirty or forty feet high. One of them we knew must be our consulate; but which? No one could tell us. No one could even direct us to the military headquarters, or to the office of the Prefect. The Italian officers knew less than the native inhabitants; they were strangers and newcomers like ourselves. We walked ahead at random towards the curve at the southern end of the harbor where masts and funnels were most numerous. Occasionally, as we passed a side street less completely blocked than the rest, we got a view of the interior of the town--an incoherent extravagance of ruin such as no pen can describe. The street always ended in a mountainous mass of wreckage; but the houses at the sides had assumed every variety of fantastic attitude. Beams and pillars crossing at absurd angles; windows twisted to impossible shapes, floors like "montagnes russes;" roofs half detached and protruding, preserved in place quite inexplicably. And then front walls torn away, laying bare the interior of apartments. In the same house one room would be a heap of wreckage, and its neighbor absolutely intact, with the music open at the piano, a marked book on the table, and the Italian Royal Family looking down from the walls. A third room perhaps held nothing but a chandelier, but that chandelier in perfect condition, without a broken globe. No two houses were alike; the earthquake had picked its victims here and there, following no predictable rule. Sometimes the victims could be seen lying in their own houses. Here and there a rope of knotted sheets hanging from a window showed where someone had escaped. And everywhere solitude and silence, save for the sound of the pick and the shovel. Only the soldiers and officials were allowed in the town: all others must remain on the Marina.

RED CROSS STATION.

A little this side of the Municipio, or city hall, which we identified through the flames and smoke in which it was enveloped, we came upon a Red Cross station--a square building belonging to the Custom House. Here, stretched out in the sun, lay the rescued of the day--five or six only, for it was not yet nine o'clock. Opposite the Municipio was the covered market, now the home of hundreds of survivors, and a place where bread was distributed. Between the market and the Municipio a marble Neptune of the eighteenth century still posed in nude absurdity. The most trivial of figures in the most trivial of poses had been spared, to the tips of his silly fingers, to stand between the flaming wreckage of the palace and the human wreckage of the market. Still further along, where the Marina widened again, we came upon the landing where the dead were laid out--men, women and children, all deposited in haste under some inadequate covering; a ghastly sight. From time to time a row boat would come up to the landing. The bodies were piled into it, and rowed out to sea.

The Commander-in-Chief, we ascertained at last, could be found on the Duca di Genova, a steamer of the merchant marine anchored at the southern end of the harbor. Our struggle through the crowds to the landing stage; our fruitless efforts to get a boat; our final success, through the help of a friendly Italian officer; our visits to one ship and another, to authorities military and civil; our vain attempts to extract even the simplest information, such as the situation of our consulate and the fate of our consul; all this would be as dreary to tell as it was to experience. After three or four hours of ceaseless effort we returned to the shore with the following net acquisitions: an order for a tent, which we might pitch at a place to be appointed by the General in command of the third sector; permission to send one short official telegram; and a friend.

The friend was Mr. Baylis Heynes, a British merchant of Messina, who represented the firm of Peirce Brothers. His house had been spared by the earthquake. After taking his wife and children to a villa outside of the town, he had hurried back without a thought for personal safety or comfort and had thrown himself into the work of saving lives and property. In the villa his wife was caring for more than fifty destitute Messinesi, with such little food and clothing as she could procure. Mr. Heynes meanwhile was indefatigable in the work of rescue; and his coolness and intelligence at a time when everyone else was excited and flustered had already proved of inestimable value. He now offered us his house for a consulate, and the large garden behind for a Red Cross hospital. They were situated at the extreme northern end of the town, more than two miles from the headquarter's ships. But the house was solid and uninjured and the garden spacious; it was in fact the "Lawn Tennis Club" of Messina. We accepted gladly Mr. Heynes' kind offer, and started back with him to inspect the premises.

It was no longer morning. The sun had been shining brightly for many hours. The smell of the dead rose from the earth, unendurably penetrating. It floated across the Marina on a light shore breeze; then at places it became suddenly pungent, so pungent that you expected to tread upon the cause. The ruined masses beside us took on a new horror. Beneath them, close to the dead of whose presence we were unconscious, were thousands of living, whose only air was the air we smelt. How few the soldiers seemed, in comparison to the gigantic task of excavation! And why were they all away? Poor men, they needed their mid-day rest, perhaps the full three hours they were given; but could there not be twice as many, working in relays?

AMERICAN CONSULATE.

Mr. Heynes pointed out the Consulate--perhaps the largest, solidest, most hopeless mass of rubbish in the whole of Messina. Nothing deserving the name of an object was discernable in the whole pile, except the long flag-staff which protruded from the heap towards the street. The Consulate had been a corner house on a side street; surely we ought to be able to identify at least the remains of the stone arch which had marked the entrance to the street. But the mass was absolutely compact and uniform, obliterating every trace of an opening. It was not astonishing that the soldiers had left that particular pile unexcavated. Hundreds of men would be needed, for many days, to get to the bottom of the mound; and what chance was there, at the end, of finding a survivor? The fate of Dr. and Mrs. Cheney was already a tragic certainty; the best that could be hoped was that their death had been instantaneous.

Not far beyond the Consulate, on a side street near the Piazza Vittoria , we saw the ruined house of Mr. Joseph Peirce, who had been our vice-consul until six days before the earthquake. A few soldiers were working in the heap; and several of the former occupants of the building were standing by, each waiting for some relative to be disinterred. One of the bystanders had been two days buried under the house, but had worked himself near enough to the surface to make himself heard, and had thus been rescued. All had known Mr. Peirce; two said they had seen him on the second day after the earthquake, his body buried and terribly crushed, his head alone appearing out of the wreckage. They told us that his brother had come to save him, but had not been able to remove the heavy pile of masonry and beams. When all efforts proved unavailing the brother had said goodbye to Mr. Peirce and stood there till he died. The body was gone now, evidently the brother had removed it later.

When we had returned to the Marina, near the point where we had first landed, we found our baggage heaped in the middle of the road. To my servant, Antonio Alegiani, who sat upon the pile, an old man was talking voluble English without noticing that he was not understood. The stranger introduced himself as John B. Agresta, a naturalized American, a pensioner of the Civil War and a very important person at the consulate. He had been guide and interpreter. He had done much work for Dr. Cheney. He would show us everything, the part of the house where the Cheneys slept, the office, the safe; especially the safe. In it we should find two thousand lire belonging to him . Why did we not come at once instead of wasting time talking to people who knew nothing? Dr. Cheney was dead, of course, and Mrs. Cheney. And Mr. Lupton? Yes, he was dead, too, and there was no doubt of it. Agresta had seen him the night before the earthquake, and had since seen his hotel, not a stone of it in place. Poor Mr. Lupton was certainly dead.

Just at this moment a young man with a pipe in his mouth came round the corner. "Why, hello, Agresta," he said, "glad to see you alive." It was Lupton himself, our vice-consul. We thought he must have stepped out of a ruin, or been dug out; in our greeting, no doubt, was something of the awe with which one would salute a visitor from the other world. Lupton soon explained that he had never left the earth, nor even its surface. Half of his hotel had been spared; he had walked down the stairs into the black street, and waded about in water up to his knees till morning dawned. The story has been published in his own words; I wish I could insert the anecdotes and reproduce the turns of the phrases with which he made us see, as in a flash, that prodigious morning of December 28th. We told him we had come to help him, and put ourselves under his orders; he seemed glad to see us; we were soon friends. Together we set out to inspect Mr. Heynes' house and garden.

It was a solid two-story building, one of an uninjured block; the very house, as a tablet reminded us, in which Garibaldi had lived at the time of his triumphant entrance into Messina at the head of the Thousand. Over the door we set up the American shield, and hung out the flag from a corner window. A week later the British flag flew beside it. Mr. Heynes had been appointed acting vice-consul of his nation. Meanwhile we turned the entrance hall below into a consular office, and set up our beds in the large garden behind, under a tent, so soon as we were able to obtain that coveted article. Sleeping upstairs was unsafe, so long as we continued to have four or five shocks a day, some of them severe enough to bring down a number of buildings.

Once settled, three problems confronted us; to excavate the old consulate, to ascertain the fate of such Americans as had been in Sicily at the time of the earthquake, and to bring relief to the suffering population of Messina.

Our second duty was to find and succor Americans. Among the survivors at Messina, besides Dr. Lupton and Agresta, we found only one family, a naturalized American with the six small children of one of his brothers who lived in Brooklyn. These we sent back to the United States. But, what Americans had been killed? This question we had no means of solving. We had brought with us long lists of Americans known to be in Sicily, whose relatives were inquiring anxiously about their fate. Something must be attempted in order to put an end to the agonized suspense of so many families. Most of the persons whom we wished to find were doubtless safe at one of the Sicilian resorts. As for telegrams, none had yet arrived from any source, and letters were not delivered until the eleventh day; there were no postal clerks, we were informed, to distribute them. It was plain that the only way to get information was to go and get it. Two of us were accordingly detailed to take the train to Taormina.

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