ready money could have helped the situation; and ready money was not yet forthcoming. The _Bayern_ had brought a certain amount of money to distribute; and I had funds of the American Red Cross. With what we had we were able to give sums of cash to the committees, the hospitals, the refuges and other charities. The hospitals of Catania alone took almost all the clothes, blankets and medical stores we had to give. Yet the hospitals were in an enviable situation compared to the refuges. Here the inmates were in a worse plight than when they had escaped, half-naked from the ruins of Messina. A blanket, a heap of straw, and a daily bread ration, was about all the average inmate had received since his arrival. Few of them had changed their clothes or brushed their hair once: all were living in a state of filth, which extended to their persons and their habitations and which was a menace to the health of the town. Let no one think that their plight was the result of neglect. The Catanians showed no neglect or inefficiency. They worked hard and they worked with intelligence, but they had no money. A curious and by no means reassuring feature of the refuges was the willingness of their inmates to stay where they were, or rather their unwillingness to move. I noticed the same fact at Palermo, where the condition of the refugees was similar, though perhaps less distressing. The inertia induced originally by the complex action of physical and moral shocks on an oriental fatalistic temperament increased rapidly, alarmingly, under the influence of a life without interest, occupation, pleasure or duty. Dependent squalor soon became pleasant, and any return to independence uninviting. The hope of getting a cigar from some visitor was enough to fill the day satisfactorily. Dirt, we know, soon became endurable; as a philosopher once said, “Every man is clean enough for himself.” What had happened already at the time of our visit was that the inmates of the refuges had begun to regard their present life as permanent, and had abandoned even the desire to change it; they had been turned into paupers. Three-quarters of them spent the days in aimless loafing and chatter; the other quarter lay gloomily on the straw, thinking of the dead. Unless these people could be awakened, unless someone should compel them soon to work and to be clean, there were signs that they would become a permanent burden; and, what is more, a permanent menace to the population. Criminals are easily made in Sicily and when they are made they have no difficulty in finding occupation. [Illustration: ITALIAN SOLDIERS DISINTERRING A CORPSE IN THE RUINS OF THE OLD CONSULATE.] [Illustration: BEARING CORPSES DOWN THE CORSO PRINCIPE AMEDEO.]