A PITFUL PICTURE

Grey River Argus, 15 April 1911, Page 8

A PITFUL PICTURE

Writing to a Wellington friend from Yang Chow under date February 23, a correspondent, ref ering to the famine in China, says: — "If only you could have been with me to-day as I went, outside the west gate. I wonder what you would have thought and I th^nl^ (t know — you would have wept, as I did, to beheld the sorrow of the people. As I was coming- back and passing hundreds living in huts like animals, I saw at a corner a poor woman weeping- fo rthe two children that had just passed away from fever and starvar tion, while her husband is lying very ill from the lack of food and she with the other three children almost starved also. Oh, the pain of it;! ,You have, never seen anything like > it. I am sure the gratitude of the poor starved' and half -frozen ' ' woman '. I shall not soon forget. This is only one of the thousands, 'nay, tens of thousands, and the vision of that other (almost starved to death) woman who was awaiting- me at home just haunted" me. Thirteen days with only a ibite of food, and some days none at all, for she is too ill to stand the crushing to get the tiny allowance granted for a time to some of the poor. About sixteen were trampled to death in their attempt in one day. Oh, for a Rockefeller's or a Carnegie's wealth now. Last night I saw about two hundred men, women, and children sitting on the Aground in the ifierce and biting cold, enough to freeze anyone, waiting for their little basin of thin dee .gruel • which a wealthy man gives in order to accumulate merit. There are sometimes several hundreds waiting for hours, and many of them with a sheet of matting to cover them. This is. what is burdening my heart now, and I suppose that is why I am telling 3'ou how it pierces me how little one can do for them . ' * '