Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

repared his own gallows. From the civil wars there still were in evidence many barbed-wire enclosures behind which prisoners had lan- guished, always hoping to get out, and yet daily anticipating execution. Another form of prison with which most of the inhabitants of the Mennonite villages had made more or less acquaintance were damp cellars. To indicate how common imprisonment was among the people whom we 256 FEEDING THE HUNGRY fed the following narrative may well serve. At a family gathering of one of our committeemen one evening, where not only his immediate family but also his sons-in-law, and several brothers-in-law were assembled, totaling fifteen persons, we were entertained by narratives of prison ex- periences. Several reported two or more imprisonments, another ninety days, another six weeks and so on down the line; men and women, all reported having been in prison, except one man, who was quiet all the while. Finally when he was asked how long he had been in, he shook his head negatively, indicating that he had not been imprisoned. Whereupon one of the young girls blurted out, ‘‘And Uncle, are you not even ashamed not to have been in prison, when we all have?” ‘This wholesale im- prisonment of course happened mainly during the times of revolution, when first one and then another party would be in control of a village. With a population of divided sympathies each side would naturally have its turn. In unsettled times, which were common, the prison cellars were only too often overcrowded. In one village they told me that for three days they had held forty-five men in one cellar under a private dwelling house, without giving them one opportunity to come out. Almost gen- erally there was very little or no consideration of sanita- tion. As a result these improvised dungeons were vermin infected to an extent that beggars all description. One prisoner with his quota of lice will provide all the rest with a sufficient supply to multiply into millions of un- welcome parasitic co-inhabitants of your own clothing in a very short time. In addition there were the dangers of infection from contagious diseases, while thus huddled together, such as spotted typhus, which was very common during and after the war. It is spread most effectively through body-lice, which act as carriers. While a louse that has fed on the blood of a person suffering from this VIZUALIZING FAMINE CONDITIONS 257 dread disease, which always has a very large percentage of mortality, will not suffer any evil consequences itself, it is almost certain to implant the germ in the blood of its next victim. An outbreak of this disease in such a prison, meant that practically all would be infected, with a mor- tality ranging from fifty to ninety percent, depending upon the vitality and resistance of the victims. Besides these unsanitary conditions, we should men- tion the insufficient and unbalanced supply of food given the