Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1918-02-21
(By' Paul U. kellogg, Editor OF
The Survey
PART I.

nue. heoIle' 1910
goons tell US that in the old days O,
Venice no pile was driven without .
chaunt, sung by the drivers as the,
nauled at the ropes. and punctuateG
ny the thud Of the weight as it fell
me chaunts were a curious mixture
OF sentiment. of bits Of. local color. Of
scraps of history. sacred and secular
reaching back to the conflicts with
Greek and Turk-and Of the work III
hand Venice is built on such piles
borne her for a thousand years above
unfathomed depths of .watery quick
sand.
1 find that my Impressions Of two
days spent in Venice in mid-Novem-
Der, with the guns OF her eighteenth
century overlords sounding scarcely
twelve miles away at the mouth of
the Pave are a mixture very much
like one OF these old chaunts. And
indeed our work in hand was to help
drive some shafts of succor into the
uncertainties that surrounded u
large remnant of her civilian popu-
lation.
We had been assigned by the Red
Cross commissioner for Europe to
make a quick survey. of the needs of
refugees throughout Italy. The great
asilh at Florence were still filled with
thousands of them, sleeping or the
floors, with scant coverings and often
with little between them and the
stones. Train-loads Of contadini were
still making their slow way down the
Adriatic coast line to southern Italy,
men. women and children crowded so
close into freight cars hat many
had to stand. And there was every
prospect that the first wave of fugi-
tlves was about to be followed by a
and greater one. Rumor had
Vt in Rome that the army headquar-
ters were falling back from the Tag
l:a,nento a few days before, and that
1t would be only a matter of hours
when Venice would be in the hands
or the Austrians under sieg,. Events.
galvanized by the spirited resistance
OF the Italian armies along the Piave.
proved these forecasts mistaken: but
without them in mind. you would, not
rot tie feel of the situation, as we
felt it when we crossed the lagoon
through the car windows saw
the don1es and towers Of the city be-
fore us: and when, a little later, an
old ganziero helping US with his
hooked pole we clamored into my
first gondola.
We had made the night trip down
AH SH SollAp ].
filling up the space between the
seats with s%uitcases and getting such.
sleep as we could in our ~overcoats. I
was accompanying the WI American
social workers who had set the STAN
dards for emergency relief at. =: San
and in the Ohio floods, one
now chief of American Red. Cross
work for refugees in France, the 9TH
er the organizer of Red Cross help
for tn" Belgian refugees in Holland
in 1914 and now Red Cross commits
sioner to Belgium. With us was a
lieutenant Of the Bersa~lieri, assigned
to US as laison and interpreter by the
italian war department. And not
least, my old leather b~rief-case,
has carried many Survey man.
home for night reading, but
row bulged as never before,
with 100000 lire. mostly in notes of
five to fifty lire. For in this
emergency, traffic line congested with
troops and military material, and the
Venetian banks closed. more bulky
drafts or even large bills were use
less.
An Old ,Dogc OF Venice.
In Rome we had been in confer
ence with. the Red Cross executives.
rom France (who were serving as
an emergency commissionl, the
ambassador, Americans IN
residence and members of. the min
With the representatives of
Associated Press we had called
On Luigi Luzzatti, former premier and
member Of parliament from Venezia.
who had Just been appointed high
"omn-i ":iare" FOR profughi Utaiian
r%efugees> and vas charged. with
ieve.op.Eg-a permanent plan Of gov
eminent assistance. We found him
n his apartments and passed through
stacked with papers and off,
documents, and our first
thought was that these were them
treasure trove from Venice. But
it turned out that this was the Gus
environment of their master.