BRITISH AND RUSSIAN SAILORS’ AID.
I do not know what words could adequately convey the extent of service rendered by all the fleets, but especially the British and Russian. As transports, store ships, refugees’ hospitals, telegraph stations they had been invaluable: but it was as rescuers of the living that they were pre-eminent. The Russian sailor was a revelation to those who did not know the quiet common sense, the tactful sympathy and the unassuming heroism of the moujik. The Russians were the only people who always had everything on the spot. The saying got about that they had ordered the earthquake and fitted out a fleet beforehand for the purpose of relief. As to the British bluejackets, they had not a reputation to make. They did exactly what was expected of them; and in the expected way; that is with energy and courage, with easy practical mastery of every kind of work, and with complete unconsciousness of anything unusual or particularly meritorious in their performance. And the English nation and press, instinctively realizing that silence may be a higher tribute than praise, has accepted the fleet’s work at its own valuation; as a task performed in the ordinary way of duty, and performed well, as became British sailors.
About the same time or a little later, the water supply was connected with a portion of the town. Lack of water had been one of our chief discomforts. It could be procured at one place only, two miles from the consulate; with great difficulty we had obtained a pailful each day for our party. The streets had become filthy beyond description: now it was possible to flood them. A train to Palermo crawled out of Messina from time to time. The dead were being removed from the streets, and many of them were buried instead of being taken out to sea. On the fires in front of the tarpaulin houses stood pots of macaroni cooking. The hospital ships which departed for Naples, Genoa or Catania were no longer crowded to over-flowing. The people actually living in Messina were comparatively comfortable. But every improvement in organization brought out more clearly the needs which confusion had obscured. Inside the city and out, no one had any clothes except what he had been able to snatch from his house on the morning of the 28th; and not two miles from the Municipio, in all directions, ran the hunger line—beyond which lay the region of actual famine.
It must be remembered that Messina was in a state of siege. That means that it was controlled in every department by a single central military authority. The state of siege was necessary in order to maintain order and health; but it entailed inevitable disadvantages in connection with relief work. Effective relief should be decentralized; it should operate through innumerable agents invested with responsibility and discretionary power, who seek out the individual and have the means to assist him. Government by martial law means that nothing can be done or given except by permission of the military chief, and an order for stores cannot be obtained in a minute. This was why the hospitals, the Red Cross stations and relief agencies of all kinds were so frequently short of supplies. Requisitions of particular articles which had run out, such as brandy or antiseptics or milk, required too great an expense of time; the workers were everywhere fewer than the needs: they could not be spared. From our own experience in sending telegrams or procuring permits we learned to appreciate the inevitable disabilities of a system of complete centralization in dealing with a situation of such chaotic complexity.
What part we could take as independent distributors was not evident. Under the circumstances we decided to divide our supplies into three parts. The first, consisting of medical stores, milk, butter, oil, chocolate and underclothes, was given to the central medical officials, for use in the hospitals. The second, of a similar nature, we took to Reggio and San Giovanni, for distribution to the hospitals there. The medical authorities of each place selected from our lists the articles of which they were in need. The remainder of the stores we took to the consulate and distributed ourselves.
The Quay Where Corpses Were Laid Out, Awaiting Burial at Sea.
In picking out individuals to assist, we paid special attention to residents of our own district, with whom we were beginning to become acquainted, to persons known to Mr. Heynes, and to such inhabitants of Messina as had some connection with America. We were constantly asked by Messinesi to send telegrams to their relatives in the United States, and if possible to help them rejoin those relatives. But as our immigration laws forbid the importation of the destitute, we had to tell the applicants that we could send their telegrams, but that we could not provide passage to America.
The consulate soon became a busy place. Two soldiers stood at the door to keep the line of applicants in order; inside, one of us investigated the applicants, and registered the facts of each case in a book, another took the written orders and brought back the stores, which were handed out by a third. It is perhaps superfluous to add that in cases of actual hunger no investigation was attempted. The help of Mr. and Mrs. Heynes was invaluable throughout. It enabled us to send stores to families at a distance, who had not heard of our consulate or were unable to come. Other pitiable cases were brought to our attention by the American and English newspaper correspondents, and by Mr. Frank A. Perret, the seismic expert well known for his heroism at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 1906.
Meanwhile the United States Warships Yankton and Culgoa, the latter loaded with stores, had joined the Scorpion in the harbor. The sailors were detailed to help us clean the house and garden and put up a number of tents for a hospital. Colonel Radcliffe, the British Military Attachè, to whose clear-headed determination is due the chief credit for the admirable organization of British relief work, aided us in countless ways. He was occupied at that time in searching for the body of Mrs. Ogston, wife, of the British Consul. When the remains were found, it was a party of American sailers from the Connecticut that formed the funeral escort.