THE FLOOD

It is partly, doubtless, the result of the instantaneous communications and the widespread publicity of the modern world that the greatest flood in the nation's history arouses little more interest than the leading murder trial of the movement. In the days when news was exaggerated around all the campfires in the wilderness, the whole-hearted sympathy of the people would have turned towards the Mississippi valley; but now the city of New Orleans, its fate still hanging in the balance, causes less excitement than the struggle, several years ago, to save the life of one man trapped in a Kentucky cave.

That the government still has an eye for what is important in the daily news is shows by the action of President Coolidge in sending the Secretary of War to the flooded districts. If the work of relief is to be wholly superintended, as it should be, by the organization of the Red Cross, there is no reason why the work of prevention should be left to the individual action of the states. Meanwhile the rest of the country can be counted on to answer, eventually, the appeals of the Red Cross; but much suffering could be avoided if the sympathies of the reading public could be diverted from the courtroom to the homeless two hundred thousand.