The Wichita Daily Eagle

AN AWFUL PICTURE

To the Editor of the Eagle,

Can you find space in your valuable journal for a suggestion of one way to celebrate a day which this year should be for us, as Americans, peculiarly of Thanksgiving. Our harvests have been phenomenally plentiful, and our tables, in accordance with the grand old custom handed down to us by our Puritan ancestors, will shortly be spread with a bountiful repast. Throughout the length and breadth of our land this feast will be laid, to which practically all will in some way be invited, the poor as well as the rich, the prisoners and outcasts even, as well as those more favored.

On the other side of this little world of ours, in Russia, that grim land of terror, there are today, not thousands, but millions, famine stricken; trying to keep their little spark of life by devouring pounded grass, stubble, anything, and winter-a Russian winter-at their door. They have appealed to their government. the czar listens. it will cost. he says 40,000,000 roubles and over, he heads a subscription, his guard du corps give up their champagne, and then-he turns to France and raises an enormous loan for-his army, even while the pitiful cry is coming from millions, it is hard to grasp, millions of men and women and, saddest of all from the little ones begging their parents for the food they have not.

We have so much. cannot we, the youngest yet the richest of all nations, stretch out our hands in brotherly love to the starving. Cannot each state raise a fund for food: cannot we spare the gleanings of our harvest for those who have none Cannot some society, like those great-hearted ministers in time of war and pestilence. the Red Cross society, be persuaded to add famine to their mission, and take charge of the grain subscribed that it may reach the sufferers.

It matters not from whence the cry of distress comes-can America shut her ears against the dying and not do something for them in His name.

Persons who are puzzling their brains to learn the cause of the belligerant attitude between German and Russia. need only to be reminded that a short time ago the czar of Russia passed through Germany and refused to meet Emperor William, who lately, on the occasion of the silver wedding of the czar and czarina, retaliated by giving no heed to the event. What more could two great nations want to prompt them to fly at each other's throats?