The following is General Kauffmann's answer:
J.B. HUBBELL, M.D., _General Field Agent, American Red Cross_:
MUCH HONORED SIR:--I am eager to express to you herewith my most sincere thankfulness for the sympathetic account of the activity of the Russian Red Cross Society, which you have been so kind to give in your letter of the eighth May current. You have had the occasion to persuade yourself of the common direction between the Russian and American Societies of the Red Cross, by which the help to our fellow creatures is not restricted to the relief of suffering in time of war, but is extended to all the calls of national calamities, from the gratuitous medical treatment of the poor to the large help afforded in time of epidemic disease, famine and other calamities. It is to me a great pleasure to see the sympathy of the American people to the Russian, the proof of which has been in the last years so evident. As you are instructed by the American Red Cross to express this feeling of sympathy to our society, I beg you to believe the heartfelt expressions of the like feeling from our side, which I pray to present in our name to your society and to the people of the United States.
The gift brought by the "Tynehead" will be accepted with deep gratitude and distributed among the needy people, according to the wish of the givers, through the offices of the beneficent committee under the august presidency of His Imperial Majesty the Heir to the Crown.
I avail myself of the present occasion to pray you to accept the assurance of my perfect consideration.
The president of the Russian Red Cross Society, M. DE KAUFFMANN.
Through the help of Mr. Wurts of our legation; our Consul-General, Dr. Crawford; Count Bobrinskoy, representing the Russian Red Cross, and the Government, as well as the Czarowitch Committee; and through the active help of Mr. W.H. Hilton, an Englishman at the head of the large linseed oil works, deacon in the Anglo-American Church, whose thirty years' business acquaintance over Eastern Russia and his sympathy with a people in distress, particularly fitting him for the work; with these agencies the assignment of the cargo was arranged to be sent to eighty-two famine centres for distribution. It was to be consigned to persons of unquestioned integrity and fitness for the work. These people had been communicated with, and their acceptance of the charge assured, and the number of carloads that each should receive made known to each, that he might make the necessary provision for its reception and distribution. Count Bobrinskoy had ordered 320 freight cars to be in readiness at Riga to receive and transport the cargo free of cost to whatever point might be desired. When these preliminary arrangements had been completed and the "Tynehead" sighted from the signal station, we started in company with Count Bobrinskoy for Riga, the port that had been previously selected by the Russian Ambassador in Washington as being free from ice and most favorable for transporting the cargo to the interior.