rendered by all the fleets, but especially the British and Russian. As
transports, store ships, refugees’ hospitals, telegraph stations they
had been invaluable: but it was as rescuers of the living that they were
pre-eminent. The Russian sailor was a revelation to those who did not
know the quiet common sense, the tactful sympathy and the unassuming
heroism of the moujik. The Russians were the only people who always had
everything on the spot. The saying got about that they had ordered the
earthquake and fitted out a fleet beforehand for the purpose of relief.
As to the British bluejackets, they had not a reputation to make. They
did exactly what was expected of them; and in the expected way; that
is with energy and courage, with easy practical mastery of every kind
of work, and with complete unconsciousness of anything unusual or
particularly meritorious in their performance. And the English nation
and press, instinctively realizing that silence may be a higher tribute
than praise, has accepted the fleet’s work at its own valuation; as a
task performed in the ordinary way of duty, and performed well, as became
British sailors.
About the same time or a little later, the water supply was connected
with a portion of the town. Lack of water had been one of our chief
discomforts. It could be procured at one place only, two miles from the
consulate; with great difficulty we had obtained a pailful each day for
our party. The streets had become filthy beyond description: now it was
possible to flood them. A train to Palermo crawled out of Messina from
time to time. The dead were being removed from the streets, and many of
them were buried instead of being taken out to sea. On the fires in front
of the tarpaulin houses stood pots of macaroni cooking. The hospital
ships which departed for Naples, Genoa or Catania were no longer crowded
to over-flowing. The people actually living in Messina were comparatively
comfortable. But every improvement in organization brought out more
clearly the needs which confusion had obscured. Inside the city and out,
no one had any clothes except what he had been able to snatch from his
house on the morning of the 28th; and not two miles from the Municipio,
in all directions, ran the hunger line—beyond which lay the region of
actual famine.
It must be remembered that Messina was in a state of siege. That means
that it was controlled in every department by a single central military
authority. The state of siege was necessary in order to maintain order
and health; but it entailed inevitable disadvantages in connection with
relief work. Effective relief should be decentralized; it should operate
through innumerable agents invested with responsibility and discretionary
power, who seek out the individual and have the means to assist him.
Government by martial law means that nothing can be done or given except
by permission of the military chief, and an order for stores cannot be
obtained in a minute. This was why the hospitals, the Red Cross stations
and relief agencies of all kinds were so frequently short of supplies.
Requisitions of particular articles which had run out, such as brandy
or antiseptics or milk, required too great an expense of time; the
workers were everywhere fewer than the needs: they could not be spared.
From our own experience in sending telegrams or procuring permits we
learned to appreciate the inevitable disabilities of a system of complete
centralization in dealing with a situation of such chaotic complexity.
What part we could take as independent distributors was not evident.
Under the circumstances we decided to divide our supplies into three
parts. The first, consisting of medical stores, milk, butter, oil,
chocolate and underclothes, was given to the central medical officials,
for use in the hospitals. The second, of a similar nature, we took to
Reggio and San Giovanni, for distribution to the hospitals there. The
medical authorities of each place selected from our lists the articles
of which they were in need. The remainder of the stores we took to the
consulate and distributed ourselves.
[Illustration: THE QUAY WHERE CORPSES WERE LAID OUT, AWAITING BURIAL AT
SEA.]
In picking out individuals to assist, we paid special attention to
residents of our own district, with whom we were beginning to become
acquainted, to persons known to Mr. Heynes, and to such inhabitants
of Messina as had some connection with America. We were constantly
asked by Messinesi to send telegrams to their relatives in the United
States, and if possible to help them rejoin those relatives. But as our
immigration laws forbid the importation of the destitute, we had to tell
the applicants that we could send their telegrams, but that we could not
provide passage to America.
The consulate soon became a busy place. Two soldiers stood at the door
to keep the line of applicants in order; inside, one of us investigated
the applicants, and registered the facts of each case in a book, another
took the written orders and brought back the stores, which were handed
out by a third. It is perhaps superfluous to add that in cases of actual
hunger no investigation was attempted. The help of Mr. and Mrs. Heynes
was invaluable throughout. It enabled us to send stores to families at
a distance, who had not heard of our consulate or were unable to come.
Other pitiable cases were brought to our attention by the American and
English newspaper correspondents, and by Mr. Frank A. Perret, the seismic
expert well known for his heroism at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius
in 1906.
Meanwhile the United States Warships _Yankton_ and _Culgoa_, the latter
loaded with stores, had joined the _Scorpion_ in the harbor. The sailors
were detailed to help us clean the house and garden and put up a number
of tents for a hospital. Colonel Radcliffe, the British Military Attachè,
to whose clear-headed determination is due the chief credit for the
admirable organization of British relief work, aided us in countless
ways. He was occupied at that time in searching for the body of Mrs.
Ogston, wife, of the British Consul. When the remains were found, it
was a party of American sailers from the _Connecticut_ that formed the
funeral escort.
ARRIVAL OF THE “BAYERN.”
Then, on the evening of the 8th, arrived the American Red Cross Relief
Ship _Bayern_, with the American Ambassador aboard and the American Naval
Attachè, Captain Belknap, in command. I am still amazed at the intuitive
grasp of the situation displayed by the organizers of the expedition.
From inception to completion, in every detail of planning and execution,
the cruise of the _Bayern_ was emphatically a success.
Messina was not the place, however, where the _Bayern_ was needed.
A day ashore convinced the Ambassador and the committee that large
distributions of food and clothing were not advisable at the present
time. Supplies and a sum of money were given to the Archbishop of
Messina, for his hospital; the stock at the consulate was replenished; a
trip was made to the Calabrian coast, where the military authorities were
given what stores they requested; then, early on the morning of the 11th,
the _Bayern_ sailed for Catania.
CATANIA.
We went ashore, wondering whether we were needed. An hour later we
wondered whether it was worth our while to think of going anywhere else.
The situation at that time was simply appalling: it is appalling today,
five weeks after our visit. Catania and every house in Catania had been
swamped with refugees. Three thousand of them lay in the five hospitals;
two thousand in the three main refuges—converted barracks or convents;
and twenty thousand were scattered over the city. One lady whom we met
had sixty in her own house; another, thirty: another, seventeen. The
Prefect was spending 20,000 lire daily, a sum barely sufficient to supply
bread rations and to keep the hospitals running, but quite insufficient
to provide sheets or clothing for the patients. Even the hospitals were
short of mattresses; in the refuges the inmates slept on heaps of straw.
The little towns in the country districts were as full of refugees as
Catania and in still greater distress; at Catania there was at least
bread. Red Cross branches, municipal committees of men and women, were
working valiantly, but they were struggling with absolute penury—a
complete lack of funds. The money received by the Prefect from the
Government appeared to be the only cash from the outside which had yet
arrived at Catania. It was still only a fortnight since the earthquake.
Apparently no one in Italy had yet realized that money was needed
immediately in places like Catania. Food and clothing were sent, for
instance, but at Catania the food and clothing shops were well stocked.
The _Bayern_ after giving away nearly its whole supply of clothes renewed
the supply by purchases at Catania for distribution at Reggio. Obviously
it would have been more economical to have given the Catanians money to
buy the clothes of which they were in want than to send the clothes from
Italy. The work of making up the clothes could have been given to the
refugees themselves, had there been money to pay them. It is true that
at Catania, as elsewhere, we found a general conviction that nothing
would make the refugees work. The women, it was said, had their children
to look after; the men could think of nothing but returning to Messina
to recover their property and the remains of their relatives. All were
plunged in a state of morbid apathy which made work out of the question.
This view, however plausible under the circumstances, has been completely
disproved; wherever the refugees have been given work to do _under proper
supervision_, they have worked. But at Catania the point was not worth
arguing. There was no money to buy stuffs and sewing machines, or to
pay wages; no rooms which could be used as workshops. A movement might
have been organized to employ fifty or a hundred women, perhaps; but
with 25,000 refugees to keep from starvation and crime the city could
not spare any of its workers to organize an employment agency which, at
the best, would benefit only a few persons. Nothing but large sums of
ready money could have helped the situation; and ready money was not
yet forthcoming. The _Bayern_ had brought a certain amount of money to
distribute; and I had funds of the American Red Cross. With what we had
we were able to give sums of cash to the committees, the hospitals, the
refuges and other charities.
The hospitals of Catania alone took almost all the clothes, blankets and
medical stores we had to give. Yet the hospitals were in an enviable
situation compared to the refuges. Here the inmates were in a worse
plight than when they had escaped, half-naked from the ruins of Messina.
A blanket, a heap of straw, and a daily bread ration, was about all the
average inmate had received since his arrival. Few of them had changed
their clothes or brushed their hair once: all were living in a state of
filth, which extended to their persons and their habitations and which
was a menace to the health of the town. Let no one think that their
plight was the result of neglect. The Catanians showed no neglect or
inefficiency. They worked hard and they worked with intelligence, but
they had no money.
A curious and by no means reassuring feature of the refuges was the
willingness of their inmates to stay where they were, or rather their
unwillingness to move. I noticed the same fact at Palermo, where the
condition of the refugees was similar, though perhaps less distressing.
The inertia induced originally by the complex action of physical and
moral shocks on an oriental fatalistic temperament increased rapidly,
alarmingly, under the influence of a life without interest, occupation,
pleasure or duty. Dependent squalor soon became pleasant, and any
return to independence uninviting. The hope of getting a cigar from
some visitor was enough to fill the day satisfactorily. Dirt, we know,
soon became endurable; as a philosopher once said, “Every man is clean
enough for himself.” What had happened already at the time of our visit
was that the inmates of the refuges had begun to regard their present
life as permanent, and had abandoned even the desire to change it; they
had been turned into paupers. Three-quarters of them spent the days in
aimless loafing and chatter; the other quarter lay gloomily on the straw,
thinking of the dead. Unless these people could be awakened, unless
someone should compel them soon to work and to be clean, there were signs
that they would become a permanent burden; and, what is more, a permanent
menace to the population. Criminals are easily made in Sicily and when
they are made they have no difficulty in finding occupation.
[Illustration: ITALIAN SOLDIERS DISINTERRING A CORPSE IN THE RUINS OF THE
OLD CONSULATE.]
[Illustration: BEARING CORPSES DOWN THE CORSO PRINCIPE AMEDEO.]
The problem of the refuges, then, was less to make them more comfortable
than to abolish them as soon as possible and in the meantime to compel
cleanliness and induce work among the inmates. But there was a scarcely
less difficult and more elusive problem connected with the thousands
of refugees scattered about the town in private houses, living in the
garrets and stables. Many of them were skilled laborers of various kinds;
not a few belonged to families of merchants or professional men and to
the well-to-do classes. Their destitution was as complete, of course, as
that of the rest, and the relief awarded to them was the same—a daily
loaf of bread. Some of them were rich, if they could only find their
evidences of wealth. To enable them to do this, and to support them
meanwhile, the Catania business men had formed an association to which we
were glad to be able to make a small contribution.
The general impression created by our visit to Catania was that of
a problem too vast, too complicated, too closely connected with the
habits and temperament of the people for any outsider to solve. To
“rehabilitate” these thousands of peasants, artisans, professional
men, merchants, landed proprietors, would require a carefully matured
plan, which must proceed from the central authorities. But meanwhile,
until the plan should be matured, there was ample scope for beneficent
foreign intervention, and the most useful way to intervene was also
the simplest—by direct money gifts, not indeed to individual refugees,
but to the local relief bodies already organized by Italians. It was
not necessary or even advisable to make large donations to the central
authorities of each place. The system was already rather too much
centralized than too little, as the authorities were the first to
recognize. Far from being jealous of direct donations to the subordinate
or independent institutions, they welcomed anyone who would investigate
the various needs, and give help when help was most wanted. It appeared
to us that the best way to dispose of American money was to entrust it to
an agent on the spot, who should travel up and down the coasts of Sicily
and encourage every well-directed movement by immediate money gifts. In
time such movements would no doubt receive help from Rome; but in the
meantime ready cash from unofficial sources might make the difference
between success and failure.
SYRACUSE.
The _Bayern_ spent three days at Catania. During that time I made a
trip of investigation to Syracuse. Here the refugees numbered only
3,000—one-eighth of the number at Catania; but 900 of these were hospital
patients. Syracuse, too, has only one-seventh of Catania’s population.
Its hospital accommodations at the time of the earthquake were for one
hundred patients. If Syracuse had succeeded better than any other place
in mastering the difficulties of the situation it was not because the
difficulties were insignificant. Syracuse was fortunate in a Prefect
and a Mayor of resource and capacity; in an unusually efficient body of
volunteer workers, with one woman of great ability at their head; and in
the fact that the importance of the work, as a moral and mental tonic
for the refugees, was realized from the very beginning. Syracuse was the
first place where refugees were set to work. The credit for this is due
to an American, Miss Katherine Bennett Davis, head of the New York State
Reformatory for Women.
When Miss Davis first thought of employing refugee women to make clothes
for the hospitals, relief work at Syracuse was just emerging from a
state of chaos. Four hospitals had been equipped after a fashion for the
reception of patients. The Municipal hospital was already in good running
order, through the efforts of Signor Broggi-Reale, head of the local
Red Cross; the Archbishop’s palace was being rapidly transformed into a
second hospital by a number of ladies; at the big barracks conditions
were more primitive until the arrival of a splendidly equipped expedition
of the German Red Cross. Most of the hospitals were short of blankets;
all needed sheets, and all were entirely unsupplied with clothes for the
patients. Of the two thousand able-bodied refugees, eight hundred were
maintained aboard the steamship _Nord Amerika_; the rest were scattered
about the town. A woman’s branch of the Red Cross was being organized
by the Marchesa di Rudini, whose activity covered every branch of the
work of relief and extended beyond the confines of Syracuse, to all
the towns of the province. Her position as wife of one of the largest
landowners of the province and daughter-in-law of Italy’s lamented
premier; her independence of any particular organization; her skill and
tact in uniting individuals and parties made her the most influential
person in Syracuse. To her is due more than to anyone else the excellent
organization of the Syracuse relief work.
Miss Davis was in Sicily in order to rest. The funds at her disposal
amounted to six hundred lire only. But she saw an opportunity to help in
the moral regeneration of the refugees and at the same time to supply
one of the most pressing needs of the city. She went to the mayor and
offered to employ refugee women in making clothes for the hospitals. Like
everyone else, the Mayor had been told that the refugees would not work;
but unlike everyone else, he decided to make the experiment. He gave Miss
Davis two of his own rooms in the Municipio, supplied her with sewing
machines, and promised to furnish all the necessary materials. She opened
her shop on January 8th and soon had fifty women at work.
Miss Davis was not alone in her labors. Besides the support of the
officials and of Madame di Rudini, she had the direct assistance, from
the first, of Mrs. Musson, wife of the British clergyman, and later of
Mrs. Sisco, of Florida. When gifts of money from the American Red Cross
and from the Committee of the _Bayern_ enabled Miss Davis to found a
second workshop at Santa Lucia, the quarter of Syracuse situated on the
mainland, Mrs. Musson became its manager. To supplement her own scanty
knowledge of Italian, Miss Davis employed as interpreter and paymaster
an English resident of Messina, Miss Smith, who had escaped from the
earthquake without any of her belongings beyond what she could carry. The
Syracusan ladies took an active interest in the workshops; two of them,
the Baronesses del Bosco, whose principal work was in the hospitals,
found time nevertheless to give much of their attention to Miss Davis’
work, and assisted her particularly in the cutting-out department.
The workshops were a success from the beginning. Under Miss Davis’
unceasing supervision the women showed no tendency to idleness. A
piece wage which would have put the unskillful and the beginners at a
disadvantage was not found necessary; the women were paid by the day,
one lira and a lunch of bread, cheese and wine. The question naturally
suggested itself, could not the men also be induced to work? And could
not their work be made to contribute, like that of the women, to supply
their own wants?
[Illustration: REFUGEE CAMP IN THE PIAZZA VITTORIA.]
Miss Davis had now the money to carry out her plans. But she had to face
a new difficulty—the jealousy of the local artisans, who resented any
influx of labor. Miss Davis began with the shoemakers because shoes, next
to underwear, were the articles of clothing most needed by the refugees.
She found a number of shoemakers among the refugees. These she induced
the local shoemakers to employ by offering the following advantageous
terms: The local man was to supply the materials and tools and to receive
the price of the product, which Miss Davis promised to buy. She was
also to pay wages to the refugee worker. Thus the refugee was employed,
the local shoemaker profited and the stock of shoes was increased.
At a later date Miss Davis found employment for all the carpenters,
masons and painters among the refugees by paying them to complete a
large two-story building, of which only one story had been built. When
finished the building became an orphan asylum for seventy-five refugee
children. The money for this work was furnished by Mr. Billings out of
the Massachusetts funds.
So far only skilled laborers had been employed. But the persons who
most needed work, those who deteriorated most rapidly when idle, were
the common unskilled laborers belonging to the lowest classes. Even in
their normal condition nothing but hunger would induce these people
to work; now they were fed and were in a state of moral inertia. Miss
Davis’ proposal to the Mayor to employ a squad of sixty day laborers in
improving the roads seemed almost certain to fail. The Mayor, however,
decided to make the attempt; he was to supply tools, materials and
supervision; Miss Davis was to pay the wages. Once more the unexpected
happened; the men worked moderately well at first, then better every day.
In a short time all traces of idleness and discontent had disappeared.
From the point of view of actual achievement and also of example
Miss Davis’ feat at Syracuse seems to me the most important single
contribution to the problem of rehabilitating the sufferers from the
Messina earthquake. Her efforts were not limited, however, to giving
employment. With funds allotted by the _Bayern_ Committee she opened
a pension or home for forty-two refugees of the better class, giving
preference to convalescents from the hospitals. Here for the first time
the refugees found soap, brushes, combs, clean clothes, all the articles
of first necessity of which they had been deprived since the earthquake.
The home was so successful that the Marchesa di Rudini devoted most of
the American money which had been given her, to spend at her discretion,
to founding two similar institutions at Nolo and Avola, small towns of
the province of Syracuse. These homes the Prefect of Syracuse promised
to support out of Government funds when the original donations should be
spent. In Miss Davis’ home at Syracuse the moral health of the inmates
was never forgotten. Before the home had been opened a fortnight the
women among the inmates were busy making clothes, voluntarily and without
pay, for less fortunate refugees. Every scheme of Miss Davis served a
double end—practical utility and moral rehabilitation.
Upon my return to Catania I found the _Bayern_ ready to start for Reggio.
During her stay she had not only dispensed relief to Catania and the
environs, but had also supplied the wants of the Taormina and Giardini
hospitals.
REGGIO.
Of our second visit to Reggio I need say little. It was the saddest
place of any, perhaps; nowhere else were the inhabitants plunged in such
a state of complete dejection. There were no adventurers or imposters
at Reggio: only the remains of families, sitting or standing mournfully
among the ruins of their own homes. There was no danger in giving money
to these people; their need was too obvious, their distress too genuine.
We distributed our cargo, gave what help we could, paid a second visit to
Messina and after two days proceeded to Palermo.
PALERMO.