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¶ Spain was dry. Into dusty Lorca in southern Murcia marched a raggle-taggle collection of 2,000 farm laborers from the mountain villages of Abiles, Dona Ines, La Paca. Some came in carts, some swung their brown heels against the moldy sides of sad-eyed donkeys, but most were on foot, faint from hunger. They had come to Lorca to live. Not for seven years, said the spokesman, had a drop of rain fallen on Abiles, Dona Ines, or La Paca.
*Chinese used to say that floods on the Yangtze-kiang augured the fall of the imperial dynasty. Engineer Herbert Clark Hoover, who has fought floods in China as well as in Mississippi and New England, explains that this Chinese saying makes excellent sense. The levees of the Yangtze are protected by willows. Vigilant police are required to keep the peasants from cutting the willows for firewood. When a dynasty degenerated, so did its police, the willows were cut, the river left its banks.