May 15--A national Polish relief association is being organized in the
United States; Paderewski, now in New York in the interests of
relief, estimates the losses of his compatriots by the war at
$2,500,000,000; he says that an area has been laid waste equal in size
to New York and Pennsylvania; that 7,500 villages have been completely
ruined; that thousands of persons are hiding in the woods and feeding
on roots.
May 16--The American Commission for Relief in Belgium has now got a
financial system working in Belgium by which the great bulk of food
needed is being supplied indirectly by the Belgians themselves through
their own energies and resources; 75 per cent. of the Belgian people
are being supplied with food through the arrangements made by the
commission, without recourse to charity.
May 20--England has asked American surgeons to man her newest and
largest field hospital; as a result, the medical schools of Harvard,
Columbia, and Johns Hopkins will send thirty-two surgeons and
physicians and seventy-five nurses; the universities will bear the
expenses of the corps.
May 21--Carleton Gibson of the Commission for relief of Poland sends a
report to New York stating that in that part of Russian Poland within
the Austro-German lines conditions are much worse than in the worst
parts of Belgium and France, and that the population is now actually
starving.
May 22--The Commission for Relief in Belgium states that about
1,500,000 persons are now destitute in Belgium through unemployment;
the monthly food requirements of the Belgians involve an expenditure
of between $7,000,000 and $8,000,000.
To the Captain of the U----.
By HARRY VARLEY.
You have drunk your toast to "the Day" that came;
The Cross is won, for you did not fail.
Do you thrill with joy at your deathless fame?
Your hand is trembling, your lips are pale!
Ah! you drink again--but the wine is spilled,
A crimson stain on the snowy white.
Is it wine--or blood of the children killed?
Captain! what of the night?
When the black night comes and the Day is done,
You sleep, and dream of the things that float
In a misty sea where a blood-red sun
Lights up the dead in a drifting boat.
Will you see a face in the waves that swell--
A baby's face that is cold and white?
Will your sleep be sweet or a glimpse of Hell?
Captain! what of the night?
Will you see the stare of the small blue eyes,
The tiny fingers of whitest wax
That will point at you, or the wound that lies,
A clot of red in her fairy flax?
Will the beads that burst on your brows be hot
As mothers' tears that are newly shed?
Will each sear and burn like a blazing dot
That eats its way through your tortured head?
Will you see the ship as it onward sped--
The Thing that flew at your fatal word?
Will the dripping ghosts be around your bed--
The screams of the dying still be heard?
When the Big Night calls--and you must obey--
Will _your_ soul shrink in its awful fright?
You have lived your life, you have had your Day,
But, Captain! what of the night?