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% phase, as they were paid in southern paper currency which would not exchange here at par. But the patients had nothing else with which to pay their fees so we perforce had to accept and stand the difference. That loss in exchange still holds, alas. The food problem was aggravated by the fact that the grain trains which the Nationalists had brought along with them were held up below Tsinanfu, our capital, by the Japanese, who cut the R.R. at that point. They are still, at writing, in control of that particular section of our north to south R.R. Some days ago the paper reported that they would be building winter quarters soon, in Tsinan! As the Chinese are fond of saying, ''Who knows?'' At the hospitals, work goes on, regardless of the rise and fall of poli­tics, the while, in our hearts, we hope to see accomplished the best that the Nationalist learders are planning for China. It can not come about in a day, however. A wave of false patriotism swept thru our schools in the spring, and the nurses did not wholly escape, but they seem to be takimg a saner view of things now, and I hope for a good winter of work with them, bobbed their heads wish now they hadn't, and some are planning so to that concerns me little, if they keep a steady upward purpose in their hearts. Some who do, but < < Y' along with all routine, was now that all Externals count for little. The nurses broken up, after April, but I hope to get it started again soon, are back from vacations. It gives them a safe, and helpful outlet, socially, and spiritually. Our funds are unusually low this fall, so Miss Yu and I have let all the graduate nurses go, and will get along for several months with just our students. It will be harder on us, but will give our seniors valuable experience in their last year as ward and out patient department charge nurses. If I can see my way clear financially, we need at least three, after the New Year. Perhaps some of you will be interested to make this particular need your annual share in our work. A graduate Chinese nurse, of the experience we can afford, costs about three hundred gold a year* The Drs Tucker returned to China in July, and the Chinese as well as myself gave them a hearty welcome. They are not at present under Board appointment, tho the staff, church, and local association, together with the gentry of the city, have asked that they be returned to the hospitals. They are however both busy with the work that is in hand, and we trust that in the near future some misunderstandings will be cleared up, and they be enabled to share nore completely in the work that needs them so sorely. We are helpless along so many lines without Dr. Tucker's long experience. I am the only foreigner on the hospital staff now, and to even try to carry classwork, operating room, ward oversight, the buying, all English correspondence, the treasurership, and more other details than I can enumerate, only means that one does none of them well. Dr. Tucker has been appointed to distribute the funds sent out for our famine area by the New^Famine Relief Committee, and he is out in our field, gtUing that life-saving aid. Dr. Emma Tucker I hope will continte to help me with classes, for she is one of my best instructors. She has just gone to one of our big outstations to carry on a two weeks branch dispensary. We used to do this work in all our outstations, but the last three years, have not had the staff to handle it. It is a very important branch of the work in a country field, thus feeding the mother hospital with the major cases, and keeping touch with the Chinese in the whole field socially, medically, and spiritually. You will be reading of the famine conditions in your news papers. It is seven years now since our ^e-w- district has had a normal crop, and adding to^ this, walif, enormously increased taxes, and the year by year increase in malnutrition and poverty, spells the present situation. Our charity patients come in with their stomachs and whole digestive tract distended with coarse food, well mixed with chaff, bark, and leaves, if they have been fortunate enough to be able to have even this poor form of nourishment^. Far too many are skeletons from sheer starvation. Farm animals have been sold, thus cutting off hope for work­ing their farms next spring; in many cases the timbers out of the mud brick houses have been sold, so the winter finds the family homeless; at the R.R. station, today, there is a huge stack of grasshoppers, dried, put up for sale, to those who for lack of anything better, must add this, to my palate doubtful delicacy, to eke out the thin millet or kaoliang gruel. These grasshoppers came in July in hordes, and ate the, at best, all too scanty crop of millet. Clouds of locusts blackened the skies in Augusts thus crowning the discouragement of the poor farmers. We, at the hospitals, can only relieve the physical suffering of the comparatively few that come within our gates and take to Him in prayer the millions around us we know are hungry and hopeless. I made rapid estimate of our inpatients today, when I made rounds, and by far the majority are charity cases. It is merciful but hard*on the xreasury, and the Treasurer!! Remember us. We need your faith, to be faithful stewards. love, sympathy, and prayer. We will try • Sincerely, Myra L. Sawyer, R.N.