Feb. 12—American Girls’ Aid Society sends apparel to France sufficient to clothe 20,000 persons.
Feb. 13—Otto H. Kahn lends his London residence for the use of soldiers and sailors who have been made blind during the war.
Feb. 14—Rockefeller Foundation reports that the situation in Belgium is without a parallel in history; Commission for Relief announces that it is possible to send money direct from United States to persons in Belgium.
Feb. 16—Queen Mary sends letter of thanks for gifts to the British-American War Relief Committee; American Red Cross sends a large consignment of supplies to Russia and Poland.
Feb. 19—London Times Fund for the sick and wounded passes the $5,000,000 mark, thought in London to be a record for a popular fund; steamer Batiscan sails with donations from thirty States; Red Cross ships seventeen automobile ambulances for various belligerents donated by students of Yale and Harvard.
Feb. 22—Sienkiewicz and Paderewski appeal through Paris newspapers for help for Poland.
Feb. 23—Rockefeller Foundation’s report to Industrial Commission shows an expenditure of $1,009,000 on war relief up to Jan. 1; food, not clothes, is Belgium’s need, so the Commission for Relief in Belgium announces from London office.
Feb. 24—Plans are made for American children to send a ship to be known as the “Easter Argosy—a Ship of Life and Love” with a cargo for the children of Belgium.
Feb. 25—Queen Alexandra thanks British-American War Relief Committee.
Feb. 26—The American Belgian Relief Fund is now $946,000.
Feb. 27—Doctors and nurses sail to open the French Hospital of New York in France.
THE GREAT SEA FIGHT.
By J. ROBERT FOSTER.
In my watch on deck at the
turn of the night
I saw the spindrift
rise,
And I saw by the thin moon’s
waning light
The shine of dead
men’s eyes.
They rose from the wave in
armor bright,
The men who never
knew fear;
They rose with their swords
to their hips strapped tight,
And stripped to
their fighting gear.
I hauled below, but to and
fro
I saw the dead
men glide,
With never a plank their bones
to tow,
As the slippery
seas they ride.
While the bale-star burned
where the mists swayed low
They clasped each
hand to hand,
And swore an oath by the winds
that blow—
They swore by
the sea and land.
They swore to fight till the
Judgment Day,
Each night ere
the cock should crow,
Where the thunders boom and
the lightnings play
In the wrack of
the battle-glow.
They swore by Drake and Plymouth
Bay,
The men of the
Good Hope’s crew,
By the bones that lay in fierce
Biscay,
And they swore
by Cradock, too—