Orleans is caring for three thousand or more refugees from the flooded district where the artificial crevasse was made, and the city has promised restitution to those whose properties were destroyed.

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Engineers seem to agree that there must be levees always, no matter what other steps are taken to prevent future floods-and they back up their statement with facts and figures taken from the conquest of the valley of the Nile, and from the past history of the Mississippi. If levees are abandoned, they point out, millions of acres of the most fertile soil in the world will be taken by the river's overflow. These fertile acres, now protected, are needed by the people of the United States.

The question of reservoirs is one even more difficult to solve, for where in the Mississippi Valley, can such storage spaces for water be built? Storage spaces which must be as large as the state of New Jersey, and may not be large enough even then! This seems to be a question of bottling the flood, rather than draining it. Yet, the run-off must be slowed up in some way, for, from the Rockies to the Appalachians, erosion is taking place, and every year much of the richest top-soil is carried off down the Mississippi. It was this rich top-soil that built up the Mississippi Delta; a considerable amount of it now goes out to sea in the river's muddy stream. This loss continues day after day, year after year. Unnoticed, unchecked, a great part of the country's richest farming land is being destroyed; in time, it will be unfit for cultivation. If you consider this, you can readily see that

flood control is not the problem of the dwellers in the Lower Valley only, but a matter of real concern for the entire nation.

It is hardly possible that erosion can be checked, and improbable that floods can be done away with for all time. But the Mississippi can be slowed down and curbed. This must be done if the permanency of our agriculture is to be assured.

Theodore H. Price, writing in "Commerce and Finance" for June 15, points out that prosperity will follow the flood, as it has, he says, nearly all of the wars and other disasters of modern times. The Civil War made business hum in the United States, he writes; increased business followed the San Francisco earthquake and fire; the World War made America the richest of nations. All this may be true, may be sound reasoning, but what Mr. Price fails to point out is that one man's disaster is another man's gold. The 1927 floods may produce good business in the country at large, but those who suffered most will gain nothing from it. Many farmers who have been ruined will never recover.

The Mississippi River belongs to the United States. It is too large and too powerful for the individual states to control. Many of the states lying beside it have spent all the money available, and given all their strength to a losing fight. They are incapable of fighting it further. The river drains a vast area unaffected by flood but which should be held equally responsible for its ravages.

The United States undertook the building of the Panama Canal, the protection of Cuba and the Philip

pines. Surely it can take over the problem of the Mississippi; we have the brains and money. Curbing the river is a man's-sized job, but it can be done. The solution, perhaps, will be slow, but relief can be given, and it must be given quickly, for not so very long after Congress meets, spring will be here, and torrents will be sweeping down the Mississippi toward the Gulf.

We are a strange people-we Americans-we so soon forget. Before the water had begun to recede and while some of the worst floods of the year were taking place, newspaper readers had become tired of the disasters along the Mississippi. It was already an old story. Newspaper men in the flooded area were fed up on horror, fed up on bravery, bored with the terrible sameness of destruction. Even the rescuers were sated. They had seen too much suffering, had endured too much. The heat, the blistering sun and blinding water, the mosquitoes, the frightened, miserable refugees, the drowned animals. . . . There was no end to the suffering. The men who had seen the most, could not talk about it.

Lindbergh flew to Paris while the waters were at their highest, and the glad news of his great triumph ended the Mississippi flood as far as American newspapers were concerned. And yet the flood waters from the McCrea break and from the Melville crevasse on the Atchafalaya Riverone of the outlets from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico-were sweeping down through the "sugar bowl" of Louisiana, and a body of water as wide as the Mississippi itself was flowing across country into the

land of the Acadians, two hundred miles west of the Mississippi, a land that had never known flood before within the memory of living man. Had either of these disastrous breaks occurred a month earlier, every paper in the country would have been full of the horrors. But the flood was officially "over."

The day that Lindbergh landed in Paris, this was happening on Bayou Teche in southwest Louisiana.

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Afternoon. A sleepy little town, swooning in the simmering heat. A negro funeral procession moving slowly down the street; a hearse bearing a coffin; many negro men and women walking slowly after it. The women wear white, the men black, for this is a member of a "burying-society" who lies dead today. Black shadows on the yellow dust of the road. A mangy cur follows the hearse, its tongue lolling out, keeping close in the shadow.

Hot. Hot. Palmetto fans sway back and forth as the feet of the marchers stir the dust of the long, dry street; a fine grey film settles upon black, sweat-streaked faces. Slowly the procession passes out of the town to the negro cemetery at the edge of Bayou Teche. Here moss-draped oaks stand beside the water, long streamers of grey moss dipping into the stream. The stream is level full-higher than any one remembers it in other years. The cemetery is cool and seems dim after the simmering heat of the road.

The hearse stops at the open grave. The fresh earth is piled beside it. Men and women stand in a semicircle, holding red lilies in black hands. The coffin is placed upon

But the old woman's voice rises suddenly to a shriek: "Oh muh Gawd! Look at dat water!"

The hymn breaks off short. The mourners stand motionless for a long second, looking at that wall of advancing water. How white it appears against the dark green of lush foliage! Then panic. The preacher cries: "Quick! Throw de coffin in de grave!"

Many hands grasp the wooden box. It drops into the hole. Men grab spades and begin to shovel in the earth. Women fall upon their knees and scoop in the earth with their hands. When the grave is half filled, the water has crossed the bayou and is upon them, the stream rushing now, widening every moment, and the cemetery ankle-deep before the mourners leave, running in terror.

Water is all around them. The

negroes scream, many rushing to the hearse. Women and children are packed inside, where the coffin rested only a few moments ago. Horses are lashed. The widow, already hysterical from sorrow, is lifted to the driver's seat. As the hearse reaches the cemetery gate, she looks back to see the open grave full of water, and the red lilies and white roses floating in the rushing stream. She screams but nobody listens. They run, splashing through the deepening flood. The homing instinct is strong, but their cabins are already knee-deep in muddy water. Frightened dogs whine from the galleries, men on horseback gallop, splashing through the streets. "Run! Run!" "Gawd help!" "Hab mussy, Jesus!" "Jesus save!"

No time to stop now. To the railroad embankment they run, crying out, falling in the water. A train is waiting, already packed full of townspeople, white and black. The mourners clamber aboard, emptyhanded, as the train pulls out. Those left behind stand on the railroad track for this is the last train out, and they must wait on housetops or in trees until the rescue boats can come when the water is deep enough.

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A hundred such scenes were enacted in Louisiana, after the flood was officially over.

This is July 1. I write in central Louisiana, where the refugees have returned to their homes and are making a new start. Let me try to tell you what I see from the window of this house in which I

write. A bare expanse of muddy field; fences down and drainage ditches obliterated. The one house that lies within my range of vision has drifted from its foundations and is askew upon the ground. Its chimney has fallen. All of its outbuildings have been washed away and there, in the center of the field, the green-painted cistern which formerly held rain-water for drinking purposes, lies half buried in mud.

Nevertheless, there are people living in that house. In the field four men working-four men who are "walking in" their seeds with bare feet, because the ground is still too muddy to bear the weight of the plow and mule. There is one mule left for that family. Three were drowned or lost in the overflow. Once there were some forty hogs here. There is none here now. Once there was a flock of chickens. They are all drowned. Once there were beehives, and a cow. Not now. In that house yonder, a woman is preparing dinner for the men who work in the field; she cooks on a rusty wood-burning stove which has been set on the sloping veranda, its pipe extending only a few feet into the air. In that house is a supply of food given by the Red Cross when the family left the refugee camp; enough food to last ten days. Leaving Baton Rouge yesterday, where they had been sheltered and cared for for a month, they were given the following things to take with them: two bushels of soy-beans, three bushels of corn, ten bushels of cotton-seed and one dollar's worth of garden-seed. Each man was given a shovel and a hoe, and his work stock was returned to him by boat from

pastures on the highlands near Baton Rouge. In addition to this, the members of the family had rations to last ten days. They were cautioned to boil all drinking-water.

The Red Cross has done its part, and a glorious part it is, too. The people are truly grateful, and with reason; had it not been for the organized life-saving crews, working for the Red Cross, the loss of life would have been enormous.

Here in central Louisiana, among these people who have lost everything, it is difficult to look at the matter of future flood-control calmly and dispassionately. For these people are beginning over again with almost nothing to begin with-not even an assurance that their lands will not be inundated next year. No matter how their crops may prosper -and it is late in the summer to plant a crop under all this blistering heat-there are hard times ahead. Many of them will be hungry this fall. School-houses have been washed away, and the funds of the state are insufficient to replace them in time for the autumn session. Many churches are damaged beyond repair, and the land itself is covered with silt and sand from the receding waters.

But no matter for all that. We of the Lower Valley have known overflows before and each time we have begun again; but each time it is harder to begin. What we want is security from overflows. We can "get by" this time, perhaps, if there is promise of safety for the future.

any

What we want is assurance that the government of these United States will take over the task of curbing the Mississippi. We ask that, and we feel we have the right to ask it.

I

S THERE a place for the unofficial volunteer in bringing about an understanding between nations, or must he wear a uniform? Is there a chance through friendly negotiation between plain citizens to narrow the field in which conflicts between nations are apt to occur? Can the methods of science be applied to the study of international relations and the prevention of international friction? The Institute of Pacific Relations is an attempt to answer these questions.

Two years ago a group of about one hundred and fifty self-supported volunteers, representing China, Japan including Korea, the United States including the Philippines, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Territory of Hawaii, and some members at large, met for two weeks on the beautiful campus of Punahou College in Honolulu. They lived together in the college dormitories. The members of the Institute represented a wide divergence in origin, in training and in approach to the important problems of the Pacific. Those who already knew the answers to these questions soon found themselves in an atmosphere of scientific inquiry where prejudice and preconception were forced aside by the frank studies of the research worker

or by the penetrating questions of the open-eyed and open-minded world scholar. There grew up a feeling of mutual respect and confidence through personal acquaintance. No issue was found too delicate for discussion. The experiment was a success, although that success was not recorded in the usual way by majority decisions and resolutions. It was a congress of modest workers who refused to be baffled by the many difficulties or to be disturbed by those who wished to substitute passion for thought.

There was some difficulty in organizing the Institute because of the desire of the Filipinos and the Koreans for an independent position but, by a series of conferences, this was finally adjusted. The Japanese members were still keenly sensitive because of America's immigration law, the Chinese were imbued with the ardent patriotic spirit of the "new China" and "white" Australia was much to the fore. Some searching questions were asked, such as, where did the right come from by which one group of world citizens, in political possession of unoccupied land, denies other citizens, with crowded lands and over-population, the right of emigration? Discussion at one of the open forum meetings