"Water! Water!"

Shrewd Norfolk farmers in the east of England were reported last week to be bartering pails of milk for pints of water. Half round the world in Santiago de Cuba there were street fights and stabbings when the water-carts passed. Prolonged drought was parching many lands, but rural England and Cuba seemed to suffer most. Scientists recalled that, although man can go without food for two months and live, without water he shrivels and dies in from six days to ten.

So scarce grew water throughout the English midlands that numerous water-hogging textile mills were forced to shut down for one week provisionally. In London, the Ministry of Health, after advising municipalities to ration their water with "rigid economy," concluded cryptically: "Statistics appear to show that the rainfall in England during the next few years may continue below average."

Though their crops were parching, English farmers kept their level heads, but small-town Cubans panicked badly. Frantic was the situation provoked at Santiago de Cuba when the Chief of the Water Works, without warning, cut off all water from public buildings, hotels, finally from homes. Next day this thrice rash official telegraphed to Havana:

WATER WORKS DEPARTMENT UNABLE COPE WITH SITUATION THE 150,000 RESIDENTS OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA HAVE BECOME UNRULY.

New crimes invented during the British drought included, "Washing an automobile with drinking water," for which offense a London truckman was fined -L-i. When driving rainstorms finally burst over Southern England and Northern France, the atmosphere was so surcharged with heat that the rain fell warm and muggy.