Subsequently, on the second reading of the Appropriation Bill, the President of the Local Government Board summarised the measures to be taken to prevent or relieve distress. For the prevention of unemployment, manufacturers were making patriotic efforts to keep their businesses going, and working short time instead of discharging employees; additional employment would be provided by the Road Board, the Development Commission, and various Government Departments, while Distress Committees and Local Authorities were invited to plan relief works. As to relief, the Prince of Wales's Fund would, it was hoped, supersede local funds; local authorities were being asked to see to the feeding of school children, local representative committees were to be formed for the distribution of the Prince of Wales's Fund, and a Central Advisory Committee had been formed with himself as Chairman, and including Mr. Long, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald. He invited suggestions. The Poor Law was kept in reserve, as a last line of defence. The Prince of Wales issued his appeal, endorsed by the Queen, on August 6, and the response was immediate. In the first two days the subscriptions amounted to 400,000_l._; they ultimately passed 4,000,000_l._ Queen Alexandra also issued an appeal for soldiers' and sailors' families, and hosts of other appeals followed for Red Cross and hospital work and other matters; to these also response was generous. Meanwhile the British Navy had achieved its first success and suffered its first disaster. On August 5 the third Destroyer Flotilla, shepherded by H.M.S. _Amphion_, and patrolling the approaches to the Channel, found the small Hamburg-American converted liner _Königin Luise_ laying mines off the estuary of the Thames. She was chased by a destroyer and sunk by a torpedo, some fifty being saved out of a crew of 130. Early next morning, however, the _Amphion_ herself struck a mine and was sunk, and about 130 of the crew and one officer--a paymaster--were lost, besides twenty German prisoners. In officially announcing the disaster to the House of Commons (Aug. 7) the First Lord of the Admiralty said that this indiscriminate scattering of mines, imperilling even neutral merchantmen, was a new fact calling for the attention of the nations. He added, however, that the strict censorship of the Press permitted the rise of many alarming rumours, and a Press Bureau would therefore be appointed under Mr. F. E. Smith, M.P., which would give out "a steady stream of trustworthy information" from both the War Office and the Admiralty, and he emphatically commended the patriotic reticence as to war preparations shown by the Press. (The Press Bureau, however, hardly fulfilled this forecast.)