Of our second visit to Reggio I need say little. It was the saddest place of any, perhaps; nowhere else were the inhabitants plunged in such a state of complete dejection. There were no adventurers or imposters at Reggio: only the remains of families, sitting or standing mournfully among the ruins of their own homes. There was no danger in giving money to these people; their need was too obvious, their distress too genuine. We distributed our cargo, gave what help we could, paid a second visit to Messina and after two days proceeded to Palermo.
PALERMO.
Conditions at Palermo were only less desperate than at Catania. The refugees numbered about 11,000, of whom about 900 were in the hospitals. Nearly all of the remainder were in refuges, very few having been taken into private houses. All the barracks, the prison, half the schools, several convents, several theaters, and even a number of churches had been turned into refuges, of which the largest held as many as a thousand inmates. The city is larger than Catania, with more wealthy residents; it was therefore better off in many respects. But it suffered, like Catania, from the want of money from the outside, from the scarcity of intelligent workers, and from the particular dangers connected with the refuges.
I have already described the refuge system. If work is necessary for all the refugees, it is particularly necessary for those who live in these large communities. At Palermo their idleness had already turned to dangerous discontent. They complained constantly of their treatment, but refused to leave the refuges. No work for them had been organized when we arrived at Palermo. Enlightened by Miss Davis’ example, we immediately offered money for the institution of workshops on the same model as hers. The idea met with general approval. A beginning was made at once in one of the barracks and in the prison. Mr. Bishop, the American Consul, to whom we handed over the money for the enterprise, labored energetically to broaden the basis and extend the scope of the work. In a few days a ladies’ committee, of which the president was Mrs. Bishop and the vice-president Countess Mazza, wife of the General in Command at Messina, had founded workshops in five of the principal refuges, and another refuge, the Caserna Garibaldi, was organized on the same system by a parish priest, Father Trupiano, with the approval of the Archbishop of Palermo. According to the latest reports the Palermo workshops have been a success, like those of Syracuse. Some concessions had to be made to the inferior moral condition of the workers at the time when they were first employed. For instance, they had to be paid by the piece instead of by the day. But they have not proved idle on the whole, and such work as they have done has contributed directly to a most important object—the increase of the supply of clothing. Even if the Bayern committee had not been able to distribute 1,200 mattresses and 15 tons of food at Palermo, or to assist the municipal charities, their short visit of eight hours to the city would have been amply justified by the foundation of these workshops. With the cruise of the Bayern ended my direct participation in the work of relief. I have only a second-hand knowledge of the many other undertakings of the American Red Cross in Italy. But I have seen enough to have formed a few general opinions which may have a certain interest for Americans who have contributed to the various relief funds.
PROBLEMS OF RELIEF.
The Italian government and the Italian Red Cross found themselves, within a few days of the earthquake, in possession of enormous sums of money. As the government had the sole access to the afflicted districts and the sole authentic information about their needs, it was to the government that all contributions, Italian and foreign, were naturally sent. But there were several reasons why the government could not immediately turn that money over to the persons who most needed it or who could use it best.
In the first place, every consideration had to give place during the early days before the imperative necessity of transporting troops to the scene of disaster and of supplying them with the necessary food and equipment. In the second place, government funds are always particularly hard to protect from the suspicion of maladministration. The Italian government may have remembered criticisms of the way in which former funds had been distributed: at any rate, it determined on this occasion to exercise all possible vigilance to prevent the waste or misappropriation of a penny. The distrust of the Sicilians, traditional in upper Italy, may have increased the tendency to send supplies rather than money, and to give all orders from a single central source. In the third place, the temporary feeding and clothing of the destitute was a very small part of the total relief problem. The end which the contributions must ultimately subserve was to restore the refugee population to some kind of normal life, not merely to keep them alive for a few months. But how to effect their rehabilitation was a question which could not be answered until many things were known; their numbers, for instance, the possibility of rebuilding the ruined towns, the amount of property recoverable, the condition of the harbors, channels, docks—a hundred facts which only time could reveal. Whenever a general scheme should be devised, vast sums would be required for its effectuation: till then it was important not to disperse the accumulating contributions.
This policy of prudence and circumspection, admirable as regards an ultimate settlement, was defective as a means of relieving immediately the wants of scattered localities spread over two large and more or less inaccessible regions. What was wanted in order to supply so many needs in so many places was a system of extreme decentralization, with large funds at the unfettered discretion of individual agents. Such a system was incompatible with the rigid supervision of expenditure which the government felt to be necessary. It could not be adopted by the government. But precisely for that reason it could be adopted with advantage by independent and especially by foreign relief societies. By giving all their contributions to the Italian central committee they would indeed be helping in the general plan of rehabilitation which the central committee was evolving, but they would not be doing the task for which they were especially fitted and from which the central committee was to a large extent excluded. If, on the other hand, they entrusted their funds to agents in Sicily or Calabria, whose duty it should be to investigate every town and every institution and to help quickly the most useful and the most needy organizations, they would be doing what no one else could do so well, and what no one else had done at all.
The objection to such a policy was the risk of giving just offense to the Italian government and people by interfering in what was essentially an Italian concern—a problem of internal administration. Such an objection appears to me to rest as a misconception. The Italians might well resent, and would very likely have resented, any interference which took the form of independent relief organizations, with direct pecuniary assistance of individuals. As a matter of fact, the German Red Cross hospital at Syracuse was an organization of this kind and it aroused nothing but enthusiasm. A hospital, however, is not like a distributing agency. What the Italians would have objected to, and rightly, would have been any attempt on the part of foreigners to decide Italian questions; how a given body of men should be employed, where certain orphans should be sent, what families should first be assisted; or to set up independent relief bureaus to which individuals might apply, thus duplicating or confusing the work of the Italians and opening an easy way to imposters. But there could be no objection, and there was none, to selective gifts by foreigners to Italian institutions. Such distributions could not possibly conflict with the official scheme of relief, for all the charitable institutions of every city were under the control of the prefect or of the mayor. Certainly during my experience in Sicily no hint was ever given that gifts to the hospitals, refuges or volunteer committees were less acceptable than gifts to the prefect or the mayor. I think it is safe to assert that neither the Bayern nor any other American relief expedition in Sicily or Calabria has at any time given umbrage to any local authority. The central authorities at Rome, meanwhile, have done everything to assist and encourage the independent American expeditions. The Bayern was organized according to the advice of the government and with its approbation. Mr. Billings, before starting for Sicily to distribute the Massachusetts funds, consulted with several of the Italian ministers, with the head of the Central Committee, and with the President of the Red Cross. Mr. Gay and Mr. Dodge were accompanied on their trip to Calabria by an officer of the General Staff, and were recommended directly by the Ministers of War and of the Navy to the commanding officers of the different stations. The aim of the Americans has never been to act independently of the Italians, but simply to put at the service of the Italians their eyes and brains as well as their money.