The International Solidarity Fund in Spain (extract)

              November, 1938 
Mrs. Adams is English, married to a Spaniard. For many years she has been actually engaged in social and relief work in Spain.     Now she is acting as a voluntary worker for the International Solidarity Fund, travelling between Paris, Spain and England.     The following is a short extract of a report just to hand.
"After my seventeenth visit to Spain since the war started, I am confident the wonderful work of the International Solidarity Fund has never been so vitally necessary as at this moment.
Food is very strictly rationed everywhere and already the potato crop of this year is eaten along with other root plants.     The small bread ration that is given three times a week, a Spaniard ate normally at one meal.     A sugar ration of three ounces per head per month, a small quantity of chick peas and haricot beans perhaps once a week, no oil or fat even once a month, one ration of meat or fish weekly, the sale of flour is prohibited and milk only given in special cases to invalids and little children.
The Spanish people are starving!!!        Many are going on foot day and night all over their territory always in the hope that in the next village they will find something.     Passing along I picked up many women and children in my car, completely exhausted on the roadside with their long tramp day after day. These proud women say,  'Senorita, I ask nothing for myself but if you could help me to get some milk for my babies. Can't you put a milk canteen in every school, my children are getting too weak to go, it would save their lives this winter.     If only we could get some soap to keep down infection.'
The International Solidarity Fund is providing 100,000 children daily with their breakfast which consists of half a pint of hot milk and a piece of bread or biscuit.     It is completely supporting many colonies of orphans of the war and supplying the hospitals and refugee homes with much of their food.
Children are seen in crowds around the hospitals at meal times, their little hands up to the windows in the hope of a crust or something that the patients cannot eat.
Shortage of warm clothing, no boots or shoes on many and no coal and firewood, makes a terrible picture on the verge of winter!
Scabies is spreading rapidly, and although it is a disease of contact only, yet it can be spread by dirty paper money or brushing past a person in the street. Many of the cases I saw were in a terrible state of sores from constant scratching, but which could be stamped out in