I have also the honor to confirm the following telegram:
Assistant Secretary of State, Washington:
Summer clothing, second-hand or otherwise, principally for small women and children. Medicines for fevers, a large proportion being quinine. Hard bread, corn meal, rice, lard, potatoes, beans, pease, salt fish, principally codfish, any canned goods, and especially large quantities of condensed milk, as many persons at first are too feeble for other nourishment. Money will be useful, too, to secure shelter and for nurses, attendants, and many other purposes. Think 50 per cent of the rural population have already died from starvation, the greater number being old men, women, and children.
I am, sir, etc.,
Fitzhugh Lee,
[Telegram.]
The consul-general informs the Department that the Government of Cuba is not giving money in lieu of rations to starving people of the island.
Mr. Lee to Mr. Day.
No. 738.]
Havana, January 5, 1898.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of the following cipher telegram:
Lee, Consul-General, Havana:
Your suggestions are most timely. Arrangements are in progress to organize Red Cross receiving and forwarding bureau in New York and later probably receiving bureau in Havana, under your direction, with Red Cross agents to do detail work.
And to confirm the following telegram:
Assistant Secretary of State, Washington:
To list add blankets and flour.
I am, sir, etc.,
Consul-General.
Mr. Lee to Mr. Day.
No. 742.]
Havana, January 8, 1898.
Sir: I have the honor to state, as a matter of public interest, that the "reconcentrado order" of General Weyler, formerly Governor-General of this island, transferred about 400,000 self-supporting people, principally women and children, into a multitude, to be sustained by the contributions of others or die of starvation or of fevers, resulting from a low physical condition, and being massed in large bodies, without change of clothing and without food.
