Oratory

Into the grand ballroom of the Hotel Sherman, Chicago, last week strode Chicago's Mayor, William Hale Thompson. Thereupon a band of Chicago high school students (on special vacation for the day) played the Mayor's campaign anthem, "America First, Last and Always," and a sextette of uniformed Chicago policemen harmonized on the same hymn.

Meanwhile some 1,800 delegates to the Mississippi Flood Control Conference clapped hands, stamped feet, as the Mayor mounted a platform over which hung a gigantic banner inscribed with the words, "America First." From the Sherman lobby came, intermittently, strains of a fife & drum corps which, aided by placards, advertised the conference.

Thus opened the Flood Control Conference, called by Mayors Thompson of Chicago, O'Keefe of New Orleans and Miller of St. Louis, but with Mayor Thompson the dominant spirit. Seven U. S. Senators and two Cabinet members (Dwight Filley Davis, Secretary of War and James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor) were present; so were Mayors from many a Mississippi Valley city; so was onetime U. S. Senator William Lorimer, once barred from the Senate after an investigation of his campaign expenditures; so was many another notable.

Speeches numerous and lengthy fell into two classes, depending on whether the speaker did or did not represent the Federal Government. Of the latter sort was Mayor Thompson's address which termed the flood "an indictment of and challenge to the Federal Government," something which "might have been expected in China but not in the rich America with its boasted good government."

Said U. S. Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota: "We have stood around long enough meeting the situation with halfway measures."

U. S. Representative Edward E. Denison of Illinois advocated "more and bigger levees," aroused chuckles by pronouncing "Levys."

U. S. Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi pointed to the "surplus of $600,000,000" in the U. S. Treasury, said the country was rich enough to control floods.

And Mayor O'Keefe of New Orleans called upon the Federal Government to "assume full responsibility" to "make immediate appropriations."

Then spoke Secretary Dwight F. Davis, who said he came at the request of the President and to indicate the Administration's sympathy with flood sufferers. "The Mississippi can and must be controlled," said Secretary Davis. "The nation whose engineers built the Panama Canal despite seemingly insuperable obstacles can solve the . . . problem of flood control." He added that the solution was a matter for the next session of Congress to determine.

Major General Edgar Jadwin, Chief of the U. S. Army engineers, rose to his feet. General Jadwin reiterated the army-engineer insistence upon levees as the backbone of flood prevention. He said that though the flood has submerged 20,000 square miles, it would have submerged 30,000 had levees not restricted its spread. General Jadwin also attacked the popular theory that reforestation would prevent future floods; he pointed out that in 1844, when the valley was thickly forested, it experienced one of the greatest floods of its history.

After a three-day session, the Conference disbanded, after the adoption of resolutions calling on the Federal Government to supply immediate flood relief and requesting congressional and presidential action on the prevention of further floods. It was expected that the resolutions would offer some suggestions as to flood prevention, but the committee on resolutions was apparently so divided between adherents of levees, reservoirs, reforesting, spillways and various combinations of these methods that no specific resolutions were adopted.

Past Tense. "Now Orleans is safe," said last week's advertisements of the Louisville & Nashville railroad. The advertisement continued by discussing the 1927 flood in the past tense.

The flood was, indeed, in its last stages--no grand finale but a slow seeping into the Gulf of Mexico. A comparatively small area in the extreme southern portion of the Atchafalaya River basin--was still experiencing tense moments, but no major levees had "gone out" and even in northern Louisiana the waters were falling.

Meanwhile, however, heavy rains in the central and northern Mississippi valley threatened, if not a renewal of flood conditions, at least a considerable lengthening of the time estimated for the receding of the waters.

Food. A pancake griddle that bakes 440 pancakes at a time is a feature of the refugee camp at Monroe, La. It is made of welded strips of sheet iron, under which run pipes with natural gas. Thus some 3,000 refugees are speedily supplied with their hot cakes and maple syrup breakfast.

The Monroe Sunday dinner menu consists of roast lamb, creamed potatoe's, corn on the cob, cake, orange sauce, tea, coffee, milk or buttermilk--all served for the sum of 13-c-. The refugees are quartered in regulation army tents.

Mountain Streams. The official death list of the two-month flood of the Mississippi River is 114. Last week in Kentucky and Tennessee scores of mountain streams, creeks hardly with names, took probably as many lives in the space of a few days. Flooded by an eleven-hour cloudburst they swept away bridges, houses and villages. Hardest hit was Perry County, Ky., with some 30 dead. The estimated death list has passed 100, with reports from isolated mountain districts expected materially to increase this total. Said Sheriff William Cornett of Perry County: "This is undoubtedly the worst catastrophe that Kentucky has ever known."