SORROW IN WAR AND PEACE

Southland Times, Issue 23512, 19 May 1938, Page 3

SORROW IN WAR AND PEACE

THE YELLOW RIVER FLOOD DANGER NEVER FAR AWAY The Yellow river (Hwang Ho), whose neighbourhood has been the scene of such intense fighting between the Japanese and Chinese armies, is not without reason known as “China’s Sorrow.” It is not so turbulent as the Yangtze when in flood, but its unmanageability is attributable to the fact that at flood periods the amount of sediment carried assumes incredible proportions, tending to choke the channel in the lower reaches until the flow goes over the dikes. The main danger area is about 750,000 square kilometres in extent, and the population in that region normally must be between 50,000,000 and 70,000,000. Considerable anxiety is now being felt as to the outlook for these people during the coming summer. It is obvious that neither the National Economic Council nor the Yellow River Commission will be in a position to function before the flood danger becomes acute. With armies battling fiercely in the danger zone, it cannot be expected that the precautions which have been adopted during the past four or five years, including the recording of water-levels and the systematic inspection of dikes, will continue to be observed. Reports are now current that the Chinese armies are prepared to breach the dikes in case of emergency. DESTRUCTION OF WAR Not without reason is it feared that the calamity of war will be aggravated by a natural calamity of appalling dimensions. Big portions of Hopei (including the Tientsin plain), Shantung, and Honan must be considered to be in pawn to the Hwang Ho. More- ‘ over, a change of course, either to- . wards Haichow, or towards the i Yangtze Valley, would imperil exteni sive areas in Kiangsu and Anhwei provinces. While hostilities continue ; in the Yellow river basin, there can ! be no hope of effective counter measures being taken to avert a potential catastrophe of unprecedented gravity. If co-ordinated local efforts, supplemented by grants and technical direction from the Central Government, are necessary to cope with the flood danger, the outlook, when even local initiative must be lacking, must ’ be regarded as black indeed. Even if one assumes that before the onset of the summer floods the Japanese have • occupied both banks of the river from • Tungkwan to the sea, they are likely to be far too preoccupied with other

matters effectively to tackle a problem of such magnitude. , PEACE-TIME CALAMITIES There is probably no other great , waterway in the world which causes 4 geological changes so rapid that they ( can be distinctly measured within a • decade. Every time a dike is breached large tracts of land are silted up to a depth of five to eight feet or more, ' and before the channel can be forced < ' back into its course, the livelihood of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of the population is affected. Ils estuaries have at various historical . periods been located near Tientsin, in ( the Yangtze, near Chinkiang, and at Haichow, in Northern Kiangsu. Its last dramatic change of course occur- I red in 1852, when it suddenly changed its outlet from the Haichow region to ' the Gulf of Chihli, a distance, as the crow flies, of about 250 miles. An upheaval of this magnitude, in- - volving the selection by the river of an entirely new course from Kaifeng to the sea, a distance of some 400 miles, could not, of course, occur without appalling loss of life and pro- ’ perty. Nor did the trouble end there. ’ In finding the new outlet the river ■ badly damaged the historic Grand 1 Canal, and as it continued to carry down millions of cubic metres of sediment, it had to be diked in order to ensure that it would remain in its new channel—a task which occupied seve- ‘ ral years. Before reasonable security ’ was felt monster dikes had to be con--1 structed sufficiently far apart to pro- • vide a flood channel. ’ On several occasions since, however, ■ the river has burst its bounds, and ’ overflowed towards the Yangtze, or ' disturbed the regime of the Hwai 1 river. The silt which presents such i a grave problem in times of flood consists mainly of the loess, which occurs in the middle portion of the water- : shed. i CONSERVANCY CONTROL The conservancy of the Yellow river has formed the subject of int vestigations by a number of foreign 1 engineers since 1888. The cost of any j radical scheme for the permanent imi provement of the waterway, however, - would be prohibitive. Millions of dol--1 lars have been spent upon repairing - and strengthening the dikes in times - of emergency, but these are only palliaj tive measures, the expense for which - is recurring, and it has been only by i constant watchfulness and the developj ment of a special technique for the 1 rapid closing up of breaches that the F river has been kept to its present i course. In the past these palliative 1 measures were left to the provincial , authorities, but major breaches of the I dikes in Hopei in 1933 • and 1934, and - in Shantung in 1935, led the Govem--3 ment to transfer the responsibility for 1 coping with the Yellow river problem t to a Yellow River Commission, and f the National Economic Council. f Under the supervision of these 3 bodies, the danger spots were repaired i or reconstructed, at a cost' of many f millions of dollars, and by the end r of 1936 it was reported that .dike con-

struction or repair had removed immediate danger of serious floods. Safety, however, can only be ensured by unremitting vigilance. The Yellow River Commission, which has its head office at Kaifeng, from the middle of June to the end of October, receives reports of the state of the river at numerous points, thrice daily. At the first sign of danger all possible precautions are adopted. The dikes are kept under constant supervision, and any apparent weaknesses are dealt with immediately. One can only hope that during the approaching summer Nature wiS* show herself more merciful than mar\ and so distribute rainfall that th 6 usual summer floods will be avoided. That appears to offer the only reasonable prospect of averting a loss of life and property beside which that caused by hostilities in the Hwang Ho basin would appear a mere bagatelle.