Deluge

Skim ten to twenty-eight feet of water off the surface of Lake Ontario. Pour it into the Mississippi River basin from Cairo, 111., to the Gulf. The resultant swamp will be a mild picture of the conditions which Spring-swollen rivers actually produced in the lower Mississippi valley last week.

A mild picture indeed, for a layer of Ontario suggests a stationary lake. These were 7,500 square miles of rushing, swirling, mud-laden watery avalanche in which Death lurked for hundreds. At the end of the first week the fatalities were put at 200 and increased steadily. About 100,000 valley-dwellers were made homeless, from Cairo to the flat Gulf delta, on both banks.

Levees crumbled in the night. Frosts added their malediction. Like a surly brown earth serpent uncoiling, the great river straightened its devious winding down a crow's-flight line of 600 miles.

President Coolidge proclaimed that "the situation is indeed grave," appointed a special committee-- Secretaries Hoover, Mellon, Wilbur and Dwight Filley Davis--to cooperate with the Red Cross, which called for a $5,000,000 flood relief fund.

Money and men poured after the waters into the Mississippi basin. State militia went into action, forcing stubborn and panicky people to leave their homes. Secretary Hoover established an executive base at Memphis. All around raged tragedy, havoc, cosmic comedy.

At Knowlton's Point, Ark., 18 flood-refugees were giving thanks for their narrow escape from the growling > waters which had driven them from their homes. They had been picked up by the Government launch Pelican, which lay just outside the Knowlton's Point levee, waiting to transfer them to the steamer Wabash, approaching from up the river. Suddenly the levee broke. Pent waters boiled through the gap, sweeping the Pelican with them. Caught in the channel formed by the break, the Pelican twisted, spun, sank. All on board were drowned.

Near Stops Landing, Miss., thousands of workers were piling sandbags on a tottering levee. The embankment gave way, many of its defenders were drowned as they scrambled toward higher land beyond. The collapse of the Stops Landing levee forced the abandonment of the town of Greenville, Miss., whose population of 15,000 had been increased by the arrival of 10,000 refugees. Hordes of Negroes clustered on the Greenville levee, 25 feet wide and three miles long. Steamers brought them tents, taking white people from the town hotels and taller houses.

At Forsyth, Mo., a Shetland pony, panic-stricken, plunged into the flooding White River. His pasture-mate, a mule, turned back from high ground and safety; plunged after, dragged the pony ashore by the mane.*

"Better leave!" neighbors warned three families living on the Flynn plantation, twelve miles east of Little Rock, Ark. "Think we'll stay--river won't get near us," they answered. Late that night, dwellers on higher ground saw lights, heard screams on the Flynn plantation. Soon the lights went out, the screams were silenced. In the morning there was deep water where three houses had stood.

Near England, Ark., an airplane observer saw a shirt being flapped from a hole in the roof of a cotton gin. Daily for ten days the plane returned, "bombing" the hole accurately with supplies which saved the refugee's lives. ... A corps of flyers bravely patrolled a 400-mile stretch south of Memphis, in land planes. If forced down certain drowning awaited them. No respecter of greatness, the flood sadly hampered the glory-cruise of William Hale Thompson, Chicago mayor, who last week started down the Mississippi from Cairo, accompanied by a large party on the river steamers Cincinnati and Cape Girardeau. Refugees, clinging to ridgepoles and treetops, beheld the Thompson showboats, lonely, imposing Noah's Arks in the modern deluge.

On the bridge of the Cincinnati stood the heavy-jowled boss of Chicago. Glum, pouting, he clutched in his hand the manuscript of a wet and undelivered oration. In vain he sought the attention of crowds toiling on the levees. Had he ventured too near, shotguns would have banged and rifles crashed. The wash of his steamers menaced tottering dikes.

In New Orleans, where the Thompson trip was to terminate in welcome-speeches, in reception-com-mittees, masses of citizens were gathered, not to greet but to repel a visitor. Chagrined, but sympathetic, sorry, the Mayor gave $1,000 to Memphis floodfighters. In all, his party contributed $7,000.

Of all menaces, the greatest was pestilence. Typhoid broke out. Measles, scarlet fever and dysentery threatened. Weakened by their drenching, the refugees succumbed easily.

Property damage was estimated from $500,000,000 to a billion. The flooded zone is all rich cotton land. Most of the victims were small farmers--owners of several acres, a few pigs, chickens, cows, a mule. Their lives spared, they saw watery desolation where their possessions had been.

Said Henry M. Allen, National Director of Disaster Relief for the Red Cross: "No man can exaggerate the seriousness of what has and is taking place--[it] staggers imagination."

* So said despatches.