Such news as this writes itself across the brain in letters of fire! Great Goddess of Liberty, think of it! You, America!--you, who represent that goddess, with the light of an ever-widening glory on her brow, think of this shame to the very name of Freedom!--this blot on civilisation--this degrading result, as it were, of our long-boasted intellectual supremacy and scientific advancement! _Six million people on the verge of starvation!_--through no fault of their own, an industrious, peaceful, marvellously heroic little nation, deprived of its honestly-earned right to live, and dragged from its altars of prayer to weep in the dust of beggary and famine! You, America!--you, Star-crowned States of Freedom that have already done so much and _are_ doing so much for this broken and bleeding victim of bitter circumstance--you cannot stay your hand now!--you cannot--you will not! You will do _more_!--and still _more_! You cannot see a brave nation die of sheer hunger!--it is not in your heart to look on at such a frightful thing unmoved; therefore you will listen to all unprejudiced appeal--even to mine, though I have little claim to your hearing save that of the affection freely given to me by thousands of my readers in your country--an affection gratefully accepted and as warmly reciprocated! I have naught to do with the quarrels and murderous onslaughts of men filled with blind fury and lust of world-power; all that I can see or hear is the sorrow and suffering befalling those who are innocent of any quarrel--the wives, the mothers, the young girls and boys, the little children--the helpless and bewildered old people! Cruel famine is already torturing these piteous and patiently enduring souls, on whom such a black cloud of unmerited disaster has fallen that it seems as if it would never lift! All who have power to visualise their unparalleled distress _must_ and surely _will_ take every possible means to soften and mitigate the horrors of their situation. Generous America!--you have done and are doing much!--you have worked and are working strenuously to relieve the burden of Belgium’s heavy affliction, but work to you is the very pulse of your large life, and bigness of conception in noble deeds is your breathing power! Therefore, no hesitation need be felt in asking you to go on _Working_ and _Doing_ all you can for the tortured, half dying people of a devastated country--a people whose magnificent heroism has blazoned itself in a chronicle of glory for the wonder of the future years--a nation that has faced her foes unflinchingly in the simple defence of her freedom, and whose noble King, a hero to the manner born, has not uttered one undignified word of complaint against the sudden and harsh calamities meted out to him by the cruel caprices of a cruel destiny. To America all grand things are possible--America, as yet aloof from combat, can accomplish what other nations, involved in difficulties at