It is almost impossible to use the language of exaggeration
in the face of a catastrophe which has cost the United States five thousand lives, probably £40,000,000 in property, and wiped out a splendid city which stood in a class by itself from the beauty of its site and its romantic past. The notable feature of the disaster is that it was entirely unexpected.
Earth tremors are not unknown in California, but for nearly forty years the Pacific coast has enjoyed a practical immunity from serious earthquake shocks. Modern San Francisco was not merely unprepared for such a visitation, but architecturally organised on the assumption that it was impossible. The old wooden-frame houses had long given place to towering skyscrapers, which collapsed like card- houses on Wednesday, burying their inmates by scores in their ruins. In a recent description of San Francisco quoted by the Daily Chronicle we read : " In the -early days the number of wooden buildings was considerable, but builders are no longer hampered by fear of earthquakes." So Mont Pelee was pronounced extinct by geological authorities on the eve of the eruption of 1902. But this is neither the moment nor the place to discuss how and where San Francisco is to be rebuilt, for a change of site may well be deemed necessary. It is enough to record the feeling of universal sympathy that goes out to the great Republic oversea in an hour of disaster for which no parallel can be found in her annals.
