“Not until December and January of this year, the third winter since their departure, would transportation arrangements permit the division’s departure from Manchuria, which was a bleak and inhospitable land to these simple country boys who were accustomed to their own beautiful landscape, their clean mats and ornamental gardens. No heroes ever received a sadder welcome home, for they returned to find their mothers and sisters and wives wanting food. The absence of the men who had served their country so well meant the absence of so many able-bodied tillers of the soil. This and a cold and unusually rainy summer made the rice crop the scantiest for generations. “These proud northern people have not the facility of city people in accepting charity. If you went into their houses you would find that they would deny that they were hungry and possibly offer you their last bowl of rice to show that they needed no help. The home department of the Japanese Government is taking measures of practical relief by offering employment on public works which will increase the acreage for rice growing and otherwise improve the agricultural resources of the region. The opportunity is offered for foreigners to supplement the government aid by private aid which will be sympathetically and practically administered by the Japanese Red Cross Society. If it be the duty of the Red Cross to soften the cruel consequences of war, then it has here a duty as imperative as under the more sensational surroundings of the battle field.” On February 28th The American National Red Cross transmitted to the State Department $5,000, which immediately cabled this amount, through the United States Embassy at Tokyo, to the Japanese Red Cross to be applied to the famine relief work. In a second appeal issued by the foreign relief committee of northern Japan, this committee says: