We went ashore, wondering whether we were needed. An hour later we wondered whether it was worth our while to think of going anywhere else. The situation at that time was simply appalling: it is appalling today, five weeks after our visit. Catania and every house in Catania had been swamped with refugees. Three thousand of them lay in the five hospitals; two thousand in the three main refuges—converted barracks or convents; and twenty thousand were scattered over the city. One lady whom we met had sixty in her own house; another, thirty: another, seventeen. The Prefect was spending 20,000 lire daily, a sum barely sufficient to supply bread rations and to keep the hospitals running, but quite insufficient to provide sheets or clothing for the patients. Even the hospitals were short of mattresses; in the refuges the inmates slept on heaps of straw. The little towns in the country districts were as full of refugees as Catania and in still greater distress; at Catania there was at least bread. Red Cross branches, municipal committees of men and women, were working valiantly, but they were struggling with absolute penury—a complete lack of funds. The money received by the Prefect from the Government appeared to be the only cash from the outside which had yet arrived at Catania. It was still only a fortnight since the earthquake. Apparently no one in Italy had yet realized that money was needed immediately in places like Catania. Food and clothing were sent, for instance, but at Catania the food and clothing shops were well stocked. The _Bayern_ after giving away nearly its whole supply of clothes renewed the supply by purchases at Catania for distribution at Reggio. Obviously it would have been more economical to have given the Catanians money to buy the clothes of which they were in want than to send the clothes from Italy. The work of making up the clothes could have been given to the refugees themselves, had there been money to pay them. It is true that at Catania, as elsewhere, we found a general conviction that nothing would make the refugees work. The women, it was said, had their children to look after; the men could think of nothing but returning to Messina to recover their property and the remains of their relatives. All were plunged in a state of morbid apathy which made work out of the question. This view, however plausible under the circumstances, has been completely disproved; wherever the refugees have been given work to do _under proper supervision_, they have worked. But at Catania the point was not worth arguing. There was no money to buy stuffs and sewing machines, or to pay wages; no rooms which could be used as workshops. A movement might have been organized to employ fifty or a hundred women, perhaps; but with 25,000 refugees to keep from starvation and crime the city could not spare any of its workers to organize an employment agency which, at the best, would benefit only a few persons. Nothing but large sums of