which there are more sick than ever before recorded, are hard pressed for linen, drugs, and invalid foods. The American Red Cross has sent to Vienna a considerable supply of these things, which have been distributed where they will do the most good.

Throughout all these Eastern countries a practical message of relief has thus gone to the sick and the destitute from the American people.

For the situation in Vienna nature will find a slow solution. The death rate has gone up substantially; the birth rate has gone down. This is too slow a method. Already many thousands of people have left the city, but for the poor, and even for the middle class, travel on the railroads is impossible because of the expense; and there is no country adjoining Austria which would welcome more mouths to feed.

Vienna can go through this summer on the American flour and on its other supplies. In the autumn will come the crop, which will carry them through another month or two-if it can be acquired from the producers. Beyond that there seems to be no light.

In Czechoslovakia

To the north of Austria lies Czechoslovakia. On account of its production of foodstuffs and coal it is far better off than Austria. It has, however, a large industrial population, which is only in small part at work again. Czechoslovakian kronen have nearly twice the value of Austrian kronen, but even at that figure the purchase of raw material in America is almost prohibitive.

Material must come across Germany, or over the limping railroads of Austria from Trieste. There is some sign of revival, but still the wage worker who lives in the city is a long way from being economically safe or comfortable. The problem of transportation is a large one for this inland country. All its external business is at the mercy of not too friendly neighbors.

Problems in Poland

Poland is by far the largest of the new countries carved out of Europe by the Peace Conference. It has three distinct populations. Some have lived under German jurisdiction, some under Austrian, and a large proportion under Russian for the last 150 years. They have known only the laws, customs, and methods of these three very different countries. Although Poles by na

tionality and loyalty, they come to the central government at Warsaw with most divergent ideas and standards.

A Diet or parliament was elected more than a year ago to create a Constitution; but it has not yet done so, because of the difficulty of agreeing on any policy. How to divide, when to divide, and into how small pieces, has been the cause of endless debate with no definite answer.

The Polish mark began with a value of ten to the dollar. It has dropped continuously until 160 marks could be purchased for a dollar last March. The amount of printed currency is very large.

A million men are in the field; nearly all are along a line of some 400 miles, facing the Bolsheviki. Some of the troops face the Lithuanians on the north, where a little skirmishing occasionally occurs.

The Poles frankly fear peace more than war. They fear the demobilization of their army, which will greatly add to the problem of unemployment. They dread the influx of destitute and lice-infected refugees who will pour out of Soviet Russia toward the west. In the year 1919, it was estimated, 2,200,000 of these refugees came into Poland.

A large proportion of these people are coming back to their farms in the great area east of Warsaw. They find their land, but nothing else-no houses, no horses, no agricultural equipment, no seed. For five years the land has been untilled. Some give up in despair and wander on, often to become a Government charge in the cities. A great number go to work, living in the most primitive way, breaking as much of the soil by hand as is possible.

Warsaw is packed with those who have. come from the devastated parts of the country. In every part of the city are lines stretching for blocks, in which men, women, and children stand for hours. They wait for bread, for shoes, for clothing, which is being doled out by a government already hard pressed financially.

The manufacturing centers, Lodz, Bielostok, Vilna, and others, show practically no signs of revival. The factories are not running, the people are idle. While the situation is like that of Vienna, it should never be as bad because Poland can produce a substantial part of what it needs to eat.

Poland will not produce this year enough to eat. Lack of horses, cattle, fertilizer, farming equipment, and seeds all tend to make the farm output far less than it was

Poland must buy food outWith what credit and

before the war.
side the country.
where, no one can say.

The railroad system is totally inadequate to the need. Rolling stock is deficient and in bad order; fuel is scarce; repair parts for locomotives and cars are almost unobtainable.

The output of oil in Galician fields is steadily dwindling, due to the stoppage of new drilling. Unofficial figures showed a decrease in output from 2,000,000 tons in 1909 to 700,000 tons in 1919. Without new wells the output two years from now will drop to 400,000 tons. Such a shortage is a serious factor in the economic breakdown which is going on in Eastern Europe.

Lithuania and Latvia

One step further north we find the new nation of Lithuania, a rich agricultural territory, not much industrialized and not yet much organized. The government has issued no new currency and has a small army which patrols its borders. A large proportion of the population go about their usual activities on the farms. The future of this new nation is quite vague, and its policy and affiliations are not yet determined.

In Latvia we have another small nation of about a million and a quarter people, with the capital at Riga. It should before long be self-supporting, but this year it needs additional food because of the interruptions to planting during the autumn of 1919. The former record of production would seem to show that with the full force of the country at work on the farms ample food could be produced.

Industrially, the situation is very different. The large cities of Latvia are at a standstill. Libau and Windau formerly served as ports for a large amount of shipping for all this northern part of Russia. They are practically at a standstill. The heavy freight traffic to Moscow and Petrograd no longer exists.

Riga was one of the great industrial centers of this part of Europe, a splendidly equipped city with fine buildings, streets, and public services. For two years none of its factories have operated, with the result that the population is now reduced to less than one-half. Almost complete stagnation exists. There is only coal enough to run the gas works for three hours a day. The great gas wharves are deserted and the railroad lines, which formerly acted as a summer

terminal for through lines to Moscow and Petrograd, are now limited in their operation to the boundaries of the country.

The factories of Riga are in many cases partly or wholly dismantled. Before the retreat of the Russians much of the machinery was taken out. Here is one of the great producing centers of northern Europe which has become a liability instead of an asset. Esthonia

In Esthonia we find another little ration of about a million and a half persons. It is a little more than a year old, largely agricultural. The capital, Reval, is greatly overcrowded by refugees from Russia. Food is already scarce and will be scarcer before the crops come in. During January and February a terrible typhus epidemic developed in the northern part of the country, along the Gulf of Finland. All sanitary control was lost, and a serious situation was narrowly averted by the American Red Cross. Government officials and foreign observers are unanimous in saying that this work saved Esthonia, and probably much other territory in that vicinity, from a tragedy.

Reval was formerly active industrially. Its greatest industry, a large shipyard, has been idle for many months. One or two of its mills are running part time and with many difficulties giving some employment. Reconstruction Problems

This, in brief, is a description of some of the new countries which formerly made up the great nations of Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany. To the east of this tier of states lies Russia, in almost complete economic disorder and a constant menace. To the west lies Germany, struggling to regain its former industrial life, with its equipment unimpaired but with a tremendous handicap due to shortage of raw material and coal. Germany can spare little or nothing to the rebuilding of the economic life of these new states. The purchase of materials, repair parts, and equipment from the western nations is almost impossible because of the lack of credit or money.

Much has been said as to the necessity for raw material and credit from America, in order that these new countries of Europe may make a start toward normal conditions. Some credit and a limited amount of raw material has been made available to certain countries by private capital. That their

needs are far greater than private capital can provide, in a world where capital is now so scarce, can hardly be doubted.

There is another and equally essential requirement which must be brought into the situation-namely, coöperation. Without a return to the former intimate commercial and transportation arrangements recovery must be slow. Even with credit and raw materials the little nations of eastern Europe would find it hard to return to past activity.

If a large fund-say $500,000,000-were made available and placed in the hands of strong men, an influence would be created which might in a comparatively short time force a reuniting of the present broken threads of Europe's transportation and commercial equipment.

It would obviously be to the benefit of all these nations to reunite in their business life. I do not mean by this to suggest that they should become associated politically. It is quite possible, however, for them to achieve gradually as close a business relation as that which formerly existed between such countries as Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium. Unless some great influence comes into the situation and encourages the taking of the first necessary steps, it may require years for these new and untried governments to accomplish adequate results.

It is in bringing about coöperation that an American commission might make its greatest contribution. Loans would be paid back; there should be no financial loss. The giving of energy and organizing ability, guided by a sincere interest in all the peoples, would be something which need never be paid back. And yet it would create a relationship between this country and the peoples of eastern Europe the true value of which could never be measured.

By breaking down artificial commercial barriers between these new nations, transactions around the world could once more be carried on without the present impossible delays. Czechoslovakia might want American cotton; Rumania might want the product of this cotton in finished goods; England would like oil from Rumania; America must buy from England some of her highgrade manufactured articles. This in theory would bring the money back to America, not directly from the first purchaser of the cotton, but by reason of the free interchange among these nations of the products which

they have for sale. Probably no such exact set of transactions could take place, but the basis upon which the trade of the whole world was built was this ready flow of articles needed by one country and for sale by another. To remove once more the barriers which now obstruct this flow is a first essential to a return to normal commercial life. Before the war we looked upon this commercial life as a fixed and permanent thing, little realizing how badly it could be shattered by a few years of reckless waste and new conditions growing out of a

war.

As a people, we in the United States have carried on some truly great pieces of development. There is nothing in the history of the world such as the conquest of the American continent and the development of its resources in less than a century. By our efforts in the Philippines, in Porto Rico, and in Cuba we have added to the wealth, comfort, and prosperity of many millions of human beings to whom we were strangers. In building the Panama Canal, without thought of profit, this country added a link to the world's commercial chain, the value of which has only just begun to be appreciated.

Now in eastern Europe there are sixty to seventy million people to whom a helping hand, partly in money but to a considerable extent in organization, might mean salvation from complete breakdown and a slipping back to almost a primitive agricultural life. Americans are not accustomed to this particular kind of activity. They have been too busy at home, solving the problems of a new continent. They are now becoming increasingly interested in foreign trade and foreign relations. If we should take up this work, other nations must surely join in the effort. In such joint operation, and in the affiliations which would undoubtedly be created with the people for whom and with whom we worked, we could train our own people and establish foreign business relationships with a rapidity only equalled by the marvelous expansion beginning with the thirteen colonies of 1789 and ending in 1920 with the greatest and richest nation in the world. Still more important to our own posterity we will have risen to meet what is perhaps the world's greatest crisis and done it from high matives and without thought of gain.

PORTLAND HEAD LIGHT

coast of Maine, although less than 200 miles long, measured in a straight line, presents through its sinuDsities a sea frontage of nearly 3000 miles. This fringe-like edge, moreover, is tasseled with bold promontories and rocky islands, thus affording many a fiord-like harbor, to which the islands give added protection. Indeed, between Portland and Eastport it contains a far greater number of deep and wellsheltered harbors than any other stretch of coast of equal length along the Atlantic seaboard.

A Region of Forests, Lakes, and Rivers

An even greater natural asset of Maine than its harbors are its vast forests of spruce, hemlock, balsam-fir, maple, oak, and other useful trees, huge sections of which are still practically untouched. Its primeval forests of pine, which gave to Maine the name of the Pine Tree State have unfortunately almost wholly disappeared, although partially replaced by a second growth. To-day the most abundantly growing and characteristic tree of the State is the spruce rather than the pine.

In 1846, Thoreau described the scene from the summit of Mt. Katahdin, the highest point of land in the State. "No clearing, no house," he says. "Countless lakes Moosehead in the southwest, forty miles long by ten wide, like a gleaming silver platter at the end of the table; Chesuncook, eighteen long by three wide, without an island; Millinocket, on the south, with its hundred islands; and a hundred others with

out a name; and mountains, also, whose names, for the most part, are known only to the Indians. The forest looked like a firm grass sward, and the effect of these lakes in its midst has been well compared to that of a mirror broken into a thousand fragments, and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting the full blaze of the sun." The hermit of Walden Pond, should he return to the same spot to-day, would find the scene little changed.

Rivaling in importance its forests and harbors are the rivers of Maine. Aside from the excellent inland waterways that some of these afford, particularly the Penobscot and the Kennebec, their falls and rapids, if properly harnessed, would, so it has been estimated, do the work of 2,000,000 horses. No less important are the lakes, 1600 in number, which not only serve as reservoirs for the rivers and almost innumerable streams, which cover the State as with a piece of wide-flung lace, but contribute not a little toward making Maine what it is and long has been, a place sought more and more by nature-lovers and sportsmen. The area of the State, I might add, is only a little less than that of all the rest of New England.

Aside from its extensive quarries of granite, slate, limestone, and feldspar, Maine is not, however, especially rich in mineral resources. But one other exception should be noted-its springs of mineral waters, the repute of which is world-wide.

The Search for Norumbega