ing the ensuing winter. General Carranza's assurance that the situation would be cared for, therefore, has not wholly dispelled the feeling of sincere regret on the part of the American Red Cross over relinquishing its part of the relief work.
"It is hard, for instance, to leave a locality where many thousands of families, mothers and babes predominating, have been absolutely dependent for sustenance upon small portions of nourishing vegetable soup which we had daily distributed. Half-famished mothers with skeleton babies at their breasts have besought the Red Cross agents, in the name of all that is holy, to do something for their little ones — to save them if they could not save the mothers — and there have been many formerly well-to-do persons, not of the peon class, who have been among the pitiful petitioners for Red Cross aid.
"In Mexico City alone, under the very competent direction of Mr. O'Connor, a chain of free soup stations was operated for over a month and 26,000 families were supplied daily at the height of the distribution. Whole families were rescued from the necessity of trying to stomach the putrefied flesh of domestic animals found in the streets of Mexico City. Peon families could desist for a short time from picking up morsels of waste food from the rubbish heaps. They could leave off the réle of human carrion crows amid the offal of the slaughter-houses.
"Thousands of families in Monterey, Monclova and Saltillo were given a little respite from a diet of prickly or cactus pears, mesquite beans and other wild products of northern Mexico prairies, where Special Agent Weller, like Mr. O'Connor, endeared