On March 7, the Red Cross received a communication from the State Department to the effect that the Governor of the Islands of French Oceanica, which on February 8th met with a most serious disaster from a cyclone, had solicited subscriptions for the aid of the people there. As the Red Cross was collecting contributions for the Japanese Famine Fund, it most reluctantly had to decline to act in this second matter of relief work. If the Society had a membership, as it should have in this country, of a hundred thousand, it would receive into its Emergency Fund fifty thousand dollars annually which would enable it to render aid at such times of distant disaster without issuing special appeals and this without costing its members anything in addition to their annual membership dues of one dollar. This large membership must be obtained by the efforts of the present members, and if each member would do whatever he or she may be able to do towards increasing the membership, the American National Red Cross would soon have an organization worthy of the United States and always have in its treasury a fund that would enable it to reply promptly to any such appeal as that forwarded to it by the Department of State. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JAPANESE FAMINE FUND Acting upon receipt of a letter with enclosures from Judge W. W. Morrow, President of the California Red Cross Branch, the Central Committee sent out Saturday, February 10th, to the secretaries of the Red Cross Branches the following appeal: “Through the California Branch, the American National Red Cross has received from American residents in Japan an appeal for the famine-stricken people in three northern provinces of that country. In one province the rice crop has yielded only 12 per cent. of the average, and the sentence of death hangs over a quarter of a million of people if forgotten and unaided. In the eastern portion of another province the yield is only 15 per cent. and 500,000 people are in great distress and on the verge of absolute starvation, and in the third province it is certain that over 100,000 persons cannot live without speedy and prolonged aid. “Already thousands in these provinces are reduced to shrub roots and the bark of trees by which mere life may for a time be sustained, but at the least calculation 680,000 people are now facing extreme conditions. What this means for their poor women and children, we who live in the center of this oncoming misery find no words to describe. “Hundreds of thousands of persons are on the verge of starvation and winter is adding its rigors to the distress. Snow having hidden away the roots and herbs of the forests from the hands of the stricken people, speedy death or physical anguish worse than death confronts them.