The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-07-06
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

One Ting has been burned into the mind of the twentieth century citizen. and that is That no man liveth unto himself alone" without being indicted for selfish- ness. 1 A mans neighbor is no longer those liv ing on either side of him, for with the quick means of transportation the world has grown compact, and neighborliness has taken on a wider meaning than of old when we travelled at snails pace in comparison with the rapid transit of our day.
 More than this for few cents each morning man can keep in touch with what is going on around the world, and cannot afford to be indifferent when tales of suffering and cries for help come from any part of the habitable globe. Mankind is developing what is called social 1 ized conscience,'' which means that he is troubled at the thought of the woes of others.
 But even if altruism did not have the right of way in the best thinking of the hour. it has been made manifest that even as a precautionary measure we can not let any plague spots exist unless we later pay the penalty for not doing our best in stamping them out. Health is spelled with big H in the modern primer of sanitation, and health officers are coming into their own
 There are some who talked of state lrights" in days of yore when yellow fever took it's annual toll of lives in the south, land some of our statesmen and publicists did what they could to keep the United Estates government from taking charge in the matter; but I daresay that few men of standing would have the country go back to the old way in order to pre- jserve what I may call vanishing doctrine in the light of things which have hap pened recently.
 There are some and they are men of weight and integrity, who think that even the state itself has assumed too much power, or rather conferred over much auth ority on it's health officers, and so Its being threshed out in the courts. jam not bringing it here to start anything or to be unduly a partisan, but am mere ly setting it out along side of the fed eral situation to show that America Is beginning to take seriously the question of the health of the people.
 
 It is no academic question in the light of the scare at some of our Alabama
 ports over the bubonic plague. New Or leans spent millions to make it safe, and so it was well that Dr. Welch should
 have hastened to look into the situation
 as it developed in the gulf towns The health commissioner of New York, Dr. lCopeand recently sailed for the other
 side to measure the danger and take pre- } caution against the typhus in the areas of Europe in which it and other plaques l are raging.
 It seems strange how things come into one's mind and start trains of thought.
 Last week went to see the excrucating- | ly funny picture at the Lyric called , Scratch My Back" but with little
 thought that a flea from a cat would cause me to write story about typhus, 1, And yet here I am at 1t and hitchins
 it up with the drive for the "reconstruc- ' ton and rehabilitation of the lands in
 which the Jewish war relief is at work. Tn following up the idea I was surprised e that an additional s1oo,ooo appropriation I had been made by the Jewish disposition fund to continue the delousing plant in
 Poland, the chief weapon in the fight tc stay the progress of the terrible typhus . epidemic sweeping the land. it being the u second hundred thousand set apart for the = maintenance of delousing machinery. op- lerated by the American Anti-Typhus Mis- . sion, whose work is entirely non-sec- l. tarian The "cootie" jokes we laughed at are laughing matter in Poland. d H. P Davison chairman of the board ' of governors of the Red Cross Societies n is no alarmist but sane, clear-headet ,l New York banker, who, after having n made personal investigation. speaks oi a the appalling conditions which may reacf a western Europe and America if no f. stopped I could set out countries and ,- cities in which the death toll runs III !" into the tenS-yeS hunufedS--Ol tnOuSdnuS
 but what's the use? It is impossible tt
 overestimate or exaggerate the conditions , With the epidemic in full swing amongs ., peoples underfed, scantily clothed ant if often without shelter and scarcity O r. physicians, it is but common prudence If if Humanitarian feelings were brushed Y, aside for America to do all in it's power d tc give relief What if the great plagu' o and famine should leap across the At n, lantic and grip us in all of it's malignan ,,, power? We are a practical people. "Al
 ounce of prevention is worth pound o
 cure"
 But as MT. Davison well says, we cal Inc more renounce the tribulation of thes
 stricken people than you could escape tn lconsequences of the war. How long d :. you believe the plague of typhes that
 taking it's hideous death toll in Esthoni
 and Poland and the Ukraine and eatin
 along the fringes of Germany and Czechc
 Slovakia, will continue itself in thos
 lands?" Typhus is a parasitic disease rn land if not throttled may spill into tn it western countries and creep to our ow
 shcres
 gs But we will do it, not for self-preserva
 ton merely, but because we are in spit