FAMINE IN CHINA

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 301, 14 September 1920, Page 5

FAMINE IN CHINA

EFFORTS TO RELIEVE SITUATION ' INDESCRIBABLE HORRORS I By Telesraph-Prosi Associatlon-Copyrleht (Eec. September 13, 8.35 p.m.) Peking, September 12. ~ The President has issued a mandate : ordering the Ministries of Finance and the Interior to co-operato with tho civil i Governors of the Chi-li, Honon, and : Shantung provinces in establishing rice and grain stores, selling at low prices and exempting from Customs dues in order to relieve the famine situation affecting a region of ninetv thousand : square miles and thirty to forty million ' inhabitants. It is -conservatively esti- \ mated that two hundred milliou dollars in relief will be required, and. the Government is unable to extend this. Diplomats here are organising an international relief committee. A Chinese evewitness report? that tho fathers "in | many villages nro poisoning their fami- i lies in order to save them from starvation. The horrors are said to bo inde-scribable.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. CHAOTIC CONDITIONS , , PESSIMISTIC VIEWS AS TO THE '■ ' FUTURE. ] ! Shanghai, September 12. 1 Tho former President of China, Dr. I Sun Yat Sen, in an interview, said tho i condition of China to-day as the result ' of the recent fighting around Peking, was worse than at any timo in her recent history. Northern China was now i absolutely in tho hands of Japanese reactionaries, and peace between North ; and South was indefinitely postponed, unless the South was prepared uncondi- 1 tionally to surrender to Japan. "The future only holds more confusion, chaos, 1 and complications, with the ascendancy i of Japan over China more pronounced. ; There can be no peace in China until a new revolution clears out the reactionaries again."—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. j