INFLUENZA.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16428, 23 January 1919, Page 7

INFLUENZA.

MORTALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA

(By Cable.—Pr«sa Association. —Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) (Received January 22nd, 7.40 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, January 19.

Speaking to "n delegation from the conference of local authorities in the Union, sitting at Capo Town, to consider the question of tho payment of epidemic expenditure, tlio Minister of the Interior said that though tho mortality figures -were not yet complete, fully 11,000 Europeans and 127,000 coloured people died of the disease. The Government would bear four-fifths of tho expenditure

Tho confcrence, however, decided to adhere to its original demand that tho whole expenditure should be born© by the Government.

EPIDEMIC IN NEW YORK

APPALLING CONDITIONS.

MELBOURNE, January 11

Miss Vera Pearce, the well-known actress, gives a ghastly picture of New York in the throes of tho influenza epidemic. She says:—

"I happened on New York when the plague was getting its greatest hold. In no time the city was in a state of complete demoralisation. Nothing could stand against it—and remember, Hooverising was still in force, which meant that there were all sorts of restrictions on foodstuffs and household commodities, making the situation intensely acute. The embargo on gasoline (non-gasoline Sundayß prohibited the use of private cars) interfered with the transit facilities, and when at length it camb to needing help in burying people who were dying all over the city and environs, you realised the enormity and awfulncss of the dreadful scourge that caught its victims so quickly that they were well at one block, and in the' throes of the horror before they had reached the next. "Funerals were every where;— all sorts of corteges and burial parties. The sight was sickening. Imagine it: 1000 funerals a day, and not enough conveniences or hearses, and every kind of vehicle pressed into service, rough wooden carts, ready-made biers—and then, which was worse, no proper coffins, because labour and material had failed, and anyone who could knocked up a wooden box to secure at least a semblance of decent burial. "The deaths were so frequent that people were called upon to bring out their dead. Except for tho feverish bustle of funerals, the city was paralysed. And Philadelphia when I reached it was in the same plight, if not worse."