THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
WASHINGTON

December 17, 1947

Dear Mr. Rochford:

Yesterday I was shown a personal letter to her mother from
young Mrs. Ranald MacDonald III, wife of one of the four recent
Yale graduates now serving as volunteer teachers at Yale-in-China,
Here is part of it:

"Received your letter saying that Uncle Bob is
working on the Yale-in-China money-raising campaign.
Fanny and I are overjoyed. Every cent is desperately
needed.

"Can you imagine a hospital running successfully
with no plumbing, no electricity, no heat, no glass in
the windows? A terrible tragedy occurred the other
day. A nurse was coming out of a patient's room at
night. The halls had no light, because the hospital
cannot afford kerosene. She walked straight into a
large bucket of boiling water that a coolie had left
there, knocked the bucket over, fell down, and was
almost scalded to death. She has been in bed now for
three weeks, hovering near death. Her body will be
horribly scarred.

"Last week the doctors appealed for help because
they cannot afford to pay for their own food. The
hospital was frantic but could do absolutely nothing
because there was no money in the treasury.

"Each month it is seriously questioned whether the
hospital can keep going. They have a generator but no
one to fix it. The sterilizer is out of order and can-
not be repaired. There is one oxygen tank for the
whole hospital. The sewage pipes, damaged when the
Japs fired the building, broke and flooded one ward.
It's just <u>terrible</u>. They have efficient doctors and
nurses but no equipment or satisfactory place to work."

This is Yale-in-China today -- "the finest hospital in
Central China," one of the finest schools in all China. This