CHAPTER XXXIII
Lessons of the Cataclysm and Precautionary Measures
NOT A VISITATION OF PUNISHMENT—THE HELPLESSNESS OF MAN BEFORE NATURE—THE KINSHIP OF HUMANITY—INCENTIVE TO ENTERPRISE—THE GREATEST LESSON—MEASURES AGAINST REPETITION OF DISASTER—UTILIZING NATURAL RESERVOIRS—PROMOTION OF FORESTRY—CONSTRUCTION OF DAMS—SECRETARY LANE'S PLAN—A PROBLEM FOR THE PANAMA ENGINEERS.
With each succeeding dispatch from the districts stricken by flood and tornado it became clearer that the first impressions of the disaster, shocking as they were, fell not far beneath the dreadful reality.
Hundreds overwhelmed in the rushing floods, hundreds of thousands spared from sudden death only to suffer hunger and thirst and hardship and the perils of fire, cities submerged, villages swept away, countless homes and vast industries destroyed, miles upon miles of populous land drowned under turbulent waters, and over all the grim shadows of starvation and disease—this catastrophe defies picture and parallel to express its desolating horror.
The widespread calamity, which smote with its cruelest force the beautiful city of Dayton, is one of those for which no personal responsibility can be placed. Like the tidal flood which devastated Galveston and the earth upheaval which laid San Francisco in ruins, it is a convulsion which could not have been foreseen or stayed.
NOT A VISITATION OF PUNISHMENT
In the presence of such a fearful disaster there are few persons who will say, but there are some who will think, that this is in some manner a visitation decreed upon the communities which suffer. The very magnitude and superhuman force of it will suggest to many minds the thought of an ordered punishment and warning for offenses against a higher power.
Such a concept, happily more rarely held than in earlier times, is, of course, revolting to sober judgment and to the instincts of religious reverence. For it would imply that multitudes of the innocent should suffer indescribable cruelty; it would attempt the impossible feat of justifying the smiting of Dayton, where the inhabitants lived lives of peaceful, helpful industry, and the sparing of communities where men serve the gods of dishonest wealth and vicious idleness.