Part 28

March 30--Turkish Government gives renewed assurances to Ambassador Morgenthau that protection will be given to Christians at Urumiah.

RUMANIA.

March 6--Parliament passes a law empowering Government to proclaim a state of siege until the end of the war, if such a step is thought necessary; military representatives of the Government are seeking to place large orders for arms and ammunition with American firms.

March 12--Prime Minister Jonesco is quoted in a newspaper interview as saying that he is sure the Allies will force the Dardanelles, the result of which will be that Rumania will join the war.

March 15--Rumania's war preparations are causing uneasiness in Austria-Hungary.

March 18--Government seizes a large quantity of shells in transit from Germany for Turkish troops.

RUSSIA.

March 1--Paris Temps says that the Allies have reached an agreement by which Russia will have free passage through the Dardanelles.

March 4--Village women capture and bind a detachment of German soldiers.

March 24--Congress of Representatives of the Nobility, in annual session at Petrograd, passes resolutions stating that "the vital interests of Russia require full possession of Constantinople, and both shores of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and the adjacent islands."

TURKEY.

March 9--American missionaries, arriving in New York from Jerusalem, say that the fall of the Dardanelles will probably mean a massacre of Jews and Gentiles in the Holy Land.

March 11--There is a panic in Constantinople and many foreigners are leaving.

March 15--All Serbs and Montenegrins have been ordered to leave Constantinople within twenty-four hours.

March 18--The rich are leaving Constantinople; Germans from the provinces are concentrating there.

March 19--Appalling conditions prevail in Armenia, following massacres by Turks and Kurds.

UNITED STATES.

March 1--Indictments are returned by the Federal Grand Jury in New York against the Hamburg-American Steamship Company and against officials of the line on the charge of conspiring against the United States by making out false clearance papers and false manifests in connection with voyages made by four steamships to supply German cruiser Karlsruhe and auxiliary cruiser Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with coal and provisions; indictments are returned by the Federal Grand Jury in New York against Richard P. Stegler, a German, Gustave Cook and Richard Madden on the charge of conspiracy to defraud the Government in obtaining a passport.

March 2--Three indictments charging the illegal transportation of dynamite in interstate commerce are returned by the Federal Grand Jury in Boston against Warner Horn, a German, who tried to destroy the international railway bridge at Vanceboro, Me., last month; extradition proceedings by Canada, officials state, will probably have to be halted until this indictment is disposed of.

March 7--Horn is made a Federal prisoner in Maine.

March 8--Carl Ruroede, who was arrested in January with four Germans to whom he had issued spurious American passports, pleads guilty in the Federal District Court to charge of conspiring to defraud the United States Government, and is sentenced to three years' imprisonment; the four Germans who bought passports are fined $200 each; the Department of Justice is still investigating in belief there are other conspirators.

March 16--Stegler turns State's evidence and testifies against Cook and Madden in the Federal District Court.

March 18--Cook and Madden are found guilty, the jury making a strong recommendation for mercy; before the United States Commissioner at Bangor, Me., Horn claims that his act was an act of war and contests right of the courts to try him.

March 19--Stegler is sentenced to sixty days' imprisonment, and Cook and Madden to ten months; United States Commissioner at Bangor decides that Horn must stand trial in Boston.

March 24--Major General Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defense for Canada, states in the Canadian Parliament that two dozen Americans with the first Canadian contingent have fallen in battle, and that "hundreds more are in the Canadian regiments fighting bravely."

March 25--Horn is taken to Boston from Portland, after two unsuccessful attempts to obtain a writ of habeas corpus.

March 31--Leon C. Thrasher of Hardwick, Mass., an American by birth, was among the passengers lost on the Falaba; American Embassy in London and the State Department are investigating; the Thrasher family appeals to Washington for information about his death; Raymond Swoboda, American, a passenger on the French liner Touraine, which was imperiled by fire at sea on March 6, has been arrested in Paris charged with causing the fire.

RELIEF WORK.

March 1--Herbert C. Hoover, Chairman of the American Belgian Relief Committee, issues statement in London that the Germans have scrupulously kept their promise, given in December, not to make further requisitions of foodstuffs in the occupied zone of Belgium for use by the German Army; he says the Germans have never interfered with foodstuffs imported by the commission and that all these foodstuffs have gone to the Belgian civil population; Mr. Hoover further states that "every Belgian is today on a ration from this commission"; every State in the Union contributes to the fund for the Easter Argosy, the ship which it is planned the children of the United States will send with a cargo to Belgium in the name of Princess Marie José, the little daughter of the King and Queen of the Belgians; plans are made for the sending of two ships with cargoes supplied by the people of the State of New York.

March 2--American Red Cross sends large shipments of supplies to Serbia and Germany; four American Red Cross nurses sail for Germany; Serbian Agricultural Relief Committee asks for farming implements.

March 5--Mississippi, Ohio, and Nebraska form organizations to send relief ships; American Red Cross is sending large consignments of supplies to the American Relief Clearing House in Paris.

March 8--Report from London states that it has just become known in Budapest that Countess Széchényi, formerly Miss Gladys Vanderbilt, contracted smallpox while nursing in a Budapest military hospital and has been dangerously ill for a fortnight; a hospital, exclusively for the care of wounded soldiers whose cases require delicate surgical operations, is ready for work at Compiègne under the direction of Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.

March 9--In gratitude for American help, the municipal authorities of Louvain inform the American Commission for Relief in Belgium that, when Louvain is rebuilt, squares or streets will be named Washington, Wilson, and American Nation.

March 11--American Red Cross announces plan to send two units for service with the Belgian Army.

March 12--Philadelphians give $15,000 for establishment of a Philadelphia ward in the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris; other wards bear the names of New York, Providence, New Haven, and Buffalo.

March 14--Letter to the British Red Cross from Sir Thomas Lipton says that typhus is threatening Serbia.

March 16--Mrs. John Hays Hammond, National Chairman of the War Children's Christmas Fund, has received letters from Princess Mary of England, and the Russian Ambassador to the United States, writing in behalf of the Empress of Russia, expressing thanks for the Christmas supplies sent from the United States.

March 17--Mme. Vandervelde, wife of the Belgian Minister of State, has collected nearly $300,000 in the United States for Belgian relief, and plans to sail for Europe in a few days.

March 20--Serbian Legation in London sends appeal to United States for aid for Serbia from the Archbishop of Belgrade.

March 22--General Kamoroff, as special emissary of the Czar, visits the American Hospital in Petrograd and thanks the Americans for their help in caring for Russian wounded.

March 23--Contributions for the Easter Argosy reach $125,000; letter to Belgian Relief Committee brings the thanks of King Albert for American help; American Red Cross sends twenty-seven tons of supplies to Belgian Red Cross.

March 24--General Joffre cables thanks to the Lafayette Fund, which is sending comfort kits to the French soldiers in the trenches.

March 25--American Commission for Relief in Belgium announces that arrangements have been completed for feeding 2,500,000 French in the north of France, behind the German lines; for the past month the commission has fed more than 500,000 French; it is planned that the Easter Argosy will sail on May 1.

March 26--Financial report issued in London by the American Commission for Relief in Belgium states that foodstuffs of a total value of $20,000,000 have been delivered to Belgium since the commission began work, and $19,000,000 worth of foodstuffs is in transit or stored for future shipments; $8,500,000 has been provided by benevolent contributions, and the remaining $30,500,000 through banking arrangements set up by the commission; of the benevolent contributions the United States has provided $4,700,000; United Kingdom, $1,200,000; Canada, $900,000; Australasia, $900,000; clothing which has been distributed is estimated to have been worth an additional $1,000,000; it is announced that Queen Alexandra, as President of the English Red Cross Society, has written an autograph note to Mrs. Whitelaw Reid in London expressing gratitude for the aid given by the American Red Cross.

March 30--The cash collected by the Belgian Relief Fund, New York, now totals $1,004,000, said to be the largest amount ever raised in the United States for relief of distress in a foreign country.

THE DAY

By HENRY CHAPPELL.

_[The author of this poem is Mr. Henry Chappell, a railway porter at Bath, England. Mr. Chappell is known to his comrades as the "Bath Railway Poet."]_

You boasted the Day, and you toasted the Day, And now the Day has come. Blasphemer, braggart and coward all, Little you reck of the numbing ball, The blasting shell, or the "white arm's" fall, As they speed poor humans home.

You spied for the Day, you lied for the Day, And woke the Day's red spleen, Monster, who asked God's aid Divine, Then strewed His seas with the ghastly mine; Not all the waters of all the Rhine Can wash thy foul hands clean.

You dreamed for the Day, you schemed for the Day; Watch how the Day will go. Slayer of age and youth and prime (Defenseless slain for never a crime) Thou art steeped in blood as a hog in slime, False friend and cowardly foe.

You have sown for the Day, you have grown for the Day; Yours is the Harvest red. Can you hear the groans and the awful cries? Can you see the heap of slain that lies, And sightless turned to the flame-split skies The glassy eyes of the dead?

You have wronged for the Day, you have longed for the Day That lit the awful flame. 'Tis nothing to you that hill and plain Yield sheaves of dead men amid the grain; That widows mourn for their loved ones slain, And mothers curse thy name.

But after the Day there's a price to pay For the sleepers under the sod, And Him you have mocked for many a day-- Listen, and hear what He has to say: _"Vengeance is mine, I will repay."_ What can you say to God?

Reprinted from _The London Daily Express_ (Copyright).