Imperial Valley press., 1923-08-04
By. w. HOWARD RAMSEY

The American Relief Administra-
ton is Withdrawing from Russia.
The famine is over. Colonel Haskell
and the little group of Americans
who were working with him are re-
turning to America. They come by
ones and twos. unheralded and unac-
claimed, as quietly as they went,
yet, if America realized their accom-
plishments, flags would be flying.
lands blaring forth welcome. and
delegations of the most prominent
ritizena would be waiting at the pier
To cheer their Homecoming.
And being plain, unassumin-
Americans, unaccustomed to ce7e-
mony and heroics, the relief workers
would be tremendously embarrassed
BY the ovation, and inquire quite Sc
riously, whats the big idea?
What's all the fuss aboUt?" and
some OF them would probably add,
''How 3 the chances Of getting a
job?" Just the same embarrassing
question that the boys in khaki were
asking in 1919!
For almost two years now scant
two hundred Americans, on a pattle
hne far longer than the western
s-cnt, have been fighting foe more
pitiless than any the allied armies
laced. From the Baltic to the Cas-
pan Sea, from the Crirnea to the
Grals they have conquered the fam
:ne. saved more lives than were lost
n the World War, healed a sorelv-
saffering people Of the diseases which
threatened tc sweep the whole of
Europe won the benedictions of a
great, but stricken nation, achieved
be worlds greatest adventure in hu-
S2niJy!
Ard Beg it was an adventure
fn which tmerica shared, it is
',at fitting M its accomplishment
,ould not pass unnoticed, that the
ODle by whose generosity the great
Of ships was fitted out the
lers whose grain filed their
g the vast body Of taxpayers, the
whose contributions ran into five
figures. as well as those whose
IS enabled then to give only les
ums, should know their gifts
q. .src not given in vain
20 one Of the returning workers
en- tell the whole story. He may
give interesting details. 81 was al
kazan when the corn arrived. The
peasants came from distant villages
to haul it back on sledges. They
had no horses. The ice III the river
Vo,ga was breaking up. This roads
we're terrible. Some died before COM
.pleting the trip
Or, 81 was in Odessa when the
famine was at its height. There
Were bodies in the streets. People
were dying so fast they could not be
s~uried. The hospital easements were
heaped with dead" Or. 81 was at
Crenburg when the starved corpses
were being hauled to the cemetery
like cordwood, stark-naked, frozen
bodies, and tossed into shallow
trenches, while dogs waited &c tear
open the common graves"
But their stories will all have
about the same ending, "We opened
tup our kitchens, got the supplies to
the villages. NV district fer so
many hundred thousand children, is
sued corn -ations TO so many hun
dred thousand adults, inoculated so
many hundred thousand, restocked
the hospitals, provided food fit Tor
the patients, cleaned UP the towns.
The starvation was checked. The
movement of the refugees ended
Cholera disappeared Typhus de-
Iclined. Things are looking much bet
tder there now"
The men who were at the head
tquarters in Moscow, keeping the ac-
counts, directing the movement of
the food and the medical supplies
sreceiying and correlating the reports,
Fighting the battles for transporta-
tion, for adequate warehouses, for
freist cars az locomotives, for
( river D@rges anc -. sary trains, will
a-@aUe g. 4di-1en5 &c.. 1t Will not