The daily progressive-miner., 1918-03-05
THE AMERICAN RED
 CROSS IN RUMANlA

Betrayed by her closest ally and now crushed in on all sides by her en- emy. the little kingdom of Roumania today presents what is probably the saddest example of the tragedy that follows in the wake of warfare.
 Three million of her eight million once prosperous inhabitants are dead victims Of battle and disease. The remaining five million, driven back by the ene:1y hordes from the fertile DOT tion of the empire, are crowded togeth CT in what is left of free Roumania, a strip Of fertile land lying along the Russian border and representing less than third of the nations origin:nal territory.
 Members of the American Red Cross Commission, sent to alleviate as much of the Roumanians' sufferings as was possible, magined, when they left America last summer. that they had a true conception of all that war could mean to a small nation caught between the millstones of opposing forces. But when they reached Roumania they realized what futile thing imagina. tion is compared with facts.
 In Jassy, the provisional capital set Up by the indoniitable Queen Marie, they found civilians and sick and wounded soldiers dying in the streets. There was no room for them to die indoors.
 Wounded soldiers, that is, the for tunate ones, were lying three in bed in the hospitals. The less fortunate were piled one upon the other on the cold floors without proper clothing or covering. There was no means of dis injecting clothes or destroying vermin. , An epidemic of typhus had already started.
 l On the streets one found the so-call- ed 'conralescent" soldiers. discharged prematurely from the hospitals to make room for the constant stream Of incoming patients, wandering drear- fly around, mere shadows of men wait ing for the relief of death. With the i civilians it was the same story. Food and medicines were at a premium Only the strong. those who had sur plus of vitality. could expect to sur yiye.
 1 But even Jassy, with its normal pop ulation of 70,000 run up almost over night to 300,000 by the influx of starv- ing and exhausted refugees, did not tell the whole tragic story of Rouman- i ia. The little mountain villages just back of the battle lines contributed their individual quotas of suffering Threatened daily by shell-fre and bombs from the raiding aeroplanes Of enemy one would think that the inhab- itants of these little villags would have fled to other places; but with a hope born Of confdnce in the bravery of the Roumanian army and its ability { ants continued 10 finger in the danger zones, even when starvation became ian added menace
 Representatives Of the Red Cross Commission found inhabitants of two of these villages picking in the fields wild grass for food, kind of fodder that the American farmer would think twice about before feeding it to his cattle. But that was not the worst discovery that the Commission made. In the little village of Seltiu, in the district of Putna, they found a squal- i'd shack of wood and mud occupied by three little children. Their mother had succmbed to typhus. Their father
 was soldier at the front. The eldest a girl Of ten, was acting as mother to a boy Of four and a little sister of seven. The boy was lying helpless on a bag on the stone floor, his face eat
 en partly away by malignant skin disease. The bones stuck out all over his tiny body. The girl was little bet, ter of. There were neither relatives
 friends, nor any Government agency
 to give relief 10 these unfortunate bab-
 ies.
 The Commission found other cases
 equally heart-rending. and buckled
 down to the work of bringing relief to the wretched little nation with an
 intensity born of desperation. For i,
 was no easy thing to get relief to Rou
 mania. Transportation facilities had
 broken down. Tn Roumania itself , money was practically worthless. as there was no food or medical supplies , left in the remnant of the kingdom Everything had to be brought via Rus I cio