Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1931. FLOODS IN CHINA

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 45, 21 August 1931, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1931. FLOODS IN CHINA

More than forty years ago a great flood in the Yellow River supplied Meredith Townsend with the text, for an article in the "Spectator," of which he was >for many years co-edi-tor and co-owner, on "The Vastness of Calamities in Asia." It is not often that a newspaper article is easily accessible after so many years, or would be worth the search if it were, but Townsend's "Spectator" article has been preprinted in his volume on "Asia and Europe,", and probably is still unsurpassed as a vivid exposition of his text within the narrow limits allowed. Even in Asia, he ■writes, where everything is immoderate, where a. forest covers kingdoms, a river deposits a county; in a decade, and man grows, feeble from an abiding sense that Na-* ture is too strong for him, there has been no calamity in our time at once so terriblo and so dramatic as. the bursting of the Yellow Biver on 27th Septembor, 1887. . ... The Chinese, who in their courage for labour are a grand people, fought the river, embanked it, and for two thousand.-years- at least reaped enormous harvests from the.protected soil. Every-two- centuries or so, however, the river, rising in its strength like a malignant genius, swept every barrier away, cut for itself a new bed—nine . such beds are known—and ruined a province. But the people swarm in again, the new work is easier at first, and the land'is again recovered from, the vast lagoons.' The last outburst occurred twenty-five years ago, but- the Chinese still persevered, immense dykes were completed, and the province once, more beeamo a garden. As with the Po, the joint effect of these embankments and of the silt deposited by the turbid river is that its bed gradually rises to a height far above the adjoining plains until in time of flood a single breach may let it loose with appalling consequences. Townsend describes the Yellow River at such a time as gorged with water from the mountains till it forms in reality a gigantic reservoir, averaging a mile broad, from 300 to 500 miles long, and 70 feet deep, all suspended in air by artificial supports. On the. date mentioned one of these supports failed. A rent in the dyke rapidly extended to 1200 yards and then, to miles. The torrent, it is known,, in its first and grandest rush, says Townsend, though throwing out rivers every moment; at every, incline of the land, had for' its centre a stream 30, miles wide and ten feet deep, travelling probably at 20 miles'an hour—a.force as irresistible as that of.lava. No tree could last ten minutes, no house five, the very soil would be carried away as by a supernatural ploughshare'; and as for man—an ant in a broken stop-cock in a London street would be more powerful than he. . . Over a territory of 10,000 square miles, or two Yorkshires at least (for the missionaries report a wider area), over thousands of villages . . . the soft water passed, silently strangling every living thing, the cows and the sheep as well as their owners. These great villages are crammed with population, and alive with children; the whole water of the Hoangho has been pouring on them for two months, none reaching the sea; andeven by the highest estimate tho dead are fewer than those who died of starvation a few years ago in the famine of the two Shans. The number of villages wiped out by that 1887 flood in the Hoangho is estimated at 1500. The number of lives lost is left at "millions." In that teeming and uncensused coun- • try a million, or two more or less counts for little more in reckonings of this kind than an odd half-dozen in any Western land. But it seems lo Tie already clear that the dimensions of this terrible disaster.will be far exceeded by that which is now in progress on another of the great rivers of China. That the. Yangtse has not the evil reputation of the. Yellow River is sufficiently indicated by its Chinese' title of "long river" or "great river," whereas the other is called "China's sorrow." The Yangtse is indeed both a long river and a great river. Surpassed in length by the Amazon and the Nile alone, it is far ahead of these or any other rivers in its service to mankind. The only : great inland waterway of China, says Dr. H. B. Mill, is the Tangtse, which is without a parallel in the world in respect of the length of navigation it offers for ocean steamers through a densely peopled country. Except during the low water of the winter—in the higher navigable reaches the seasonal difference of depth is as much as 40 feet—the Yangtse offers steamers of 5000 or 6000 tons easy access to Hankow, 680 miles from the sea, and vessels of about 600 tons can go some 300 miles higher to Ichang. The Han River, which comes in at HankoW ("mouth of the Han"), is also navigable for about. 300 miles. From Hankow to the sea the fall is only a trifle more than an inch to the mile. The 'last 200 miles, says" Mr. George Jamieson in the last edition but one of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," are practically a-dead level, for at lowwater season there is a : rise of tide enough to swing ships as far up as "Wuhu, 200 miles from the mouth. It is impossible to .conceive the scale of a deluge which has so congested this immense and normally placid river at Hankow as to produce the calamity which was first reported three weeks ago and has been growing rapidly ever since. * Our first word on the subject . came from Shanghai on 31st July:— In addition to an -insurrection raging in the North, Communism rampant in the interior, and Canton's breakaway in the South, China ia now faced with famine throughout, the greater part of

the country owing to tho worst floods in history, ruining tho rico crops. All dykes and canals and rivors aro overflowing, with sorious loss of life. Hankow is converted into a Venice, tho only mode of transportation in tho city's streets being by sampans. There aro enormous financial losses. Ten days later the entire city—a city with a population of about 1,500,000 —was reported to be inundated to n depth of several feet. The Yanglsc had reached a record level, which in places was move than 60 feet above normal. Plague was spreading, there was an acute food shortage, and 10,000 people had been already drowned. On Monday the report was that many buildings had collapsed and that Hankow was being evacuated. The flood "waters have risen 18 inches in a single day, and are now 115 foot deep in the Chinese quarter and 10 feet in tho former British concession. Where a few years ago an infuriated mob was insulting British bluejackets and/spitting in their faces,.British gunboats may perhaps, as we have since learned, be "negotiating the streets to present the looting of British property!" So far from any abatement, yesterday's report shows a steadily mounting climax of horror. The flood waters continue to make new records. No less than 30,000,000 inhabitants are estimated to be affected. Slow death, we are;\told; is''engulfing the Hankow, district. V . . The damage is beyond computation. The remaining dykes are crumbling rapidly, and the' most solid buildings are collapsing. Lack of drinking water and food is spreading,disease... The absenco of lighting at night is creating a situation unparalleled in China's long story of. disasters, and the stench- of' dead bodies, human and animal, is adding to the horror. . - ■ A cruel comment on the last item had been supplied, a few days previously by the statement that huge quantities of lime, requirod for medical purposes are detained by antiJapanese boycott pickets at Shanghai owing to its Japanese origin. The latest item is that the flood belt is now 1000 miles long and 50 miles broad. The. one small setoff to all this misery is that 30,000,000 bushels : of surplus American wheat which had long gone begging had at last found a destination in the Yangtse Valley. Never has any country been so terribly smitten in our time, and never was die world less able to help.