FAMINE IN CHINA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 92, 18 April 1929, Page 10

FAMINE IN CHINA

APPALLING CONDITIONS STORIES OF SUFFERINGS. SHANGHAI Feb. 23. The foreign investigator, Mr E. H. Oliver, sent by the China International Famine Relief Commission to the province of Shensi, in North China, has forwarded to Peking a report of the appalling conditions prevailing throughout the famine area. According to the report, Mr Oliver at one place discovered 200 villagers huddled together in a cave. They were without food and afflicted with terrible eye sicknesses, they were simply awaiting a merciful release from their sufferings by death. Whole villages were without even a pound of grain, the inhabitants were grinding up dried grasses to powder in order to make a kind of horrible porridge. Nowhere has the winter grain been sown and there will be no spring harvest. The local gentry arc doing their best with gruel kitchens, but their assistance was merely a drop in the bucket. The same remark applies to th c grain already sent to thc famine area by the Government. In one district, it is estimated that 70,000 persons out of the total population of 120,000 ■wore completely destitute of all food or substitutes. At a place 25 miles north of Sianfu, the capital of the province, a mob of several thousands, maddened by hunger, threatened to march on the city and loot the place unless they were given food. In another district at least a hundred families had committed suicide rather than continue to suffer. Whole tracts of land can bo purchased for the price of one meal. There is hardly a draught animal left anywhere, all of them having been oaten.