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Hokitika Guardian, 3 September 1931, Page 4

Destiny seems to have declared against China for the past three .decades. After being defeated in war and expointed by foreign Powers and torn by civil strife, this unhappy country is now being devastated by enormous and overwhelming floods. Inundation like the floods in the Hankow district are possible, only ill vast continental plains drained by huge and uncontrollable rivers. But China is geographically well adapted for such visitations, and, unfortunately, her people have pursued that policy of system'aetic and comprehensive deforestation which always brings such calamaties in its train. “China,” writes the best for r estry expert Emerson Hough, “is the best instance of a land that never cared for forestry. She builds houses now of little poles, uses for fuel saplings, shrubs, herbage. Her children literally comb the hillsides for bits of roots for fuel and fodder.” But the loss of timber is not the only injury that this wilful and reckless destruction of the indigenous vegetation inflicts on the people. “The land is bared to tbe bone. It is a 1 land of floods. Villages are swept away, hard-tilled fields are ruined.” And then follows the inevitable sequel. “Starvation always stalks in China. Alternate floods and water-famines follow the waste of forests.’' There in brief is the history of the floods from which China periodically suffers. So much has been written of late about the Hankow flood and its possible consequences that we need do nothing but point the moral. When we remember that the great Hwang-ho flood of 1887 destroyed o.t least 3000, villages and country towns and drowned probably four or five million people, we may congratulate ourselves that we need not fear catastronhies on this gigantis scale in our little country. But it would be difficult to compute what floods and landslips have cost New Zealand during the past half-century, and these disastrous injuries have been inflicted on us almost solely through the reckless and indiscriminate destruction of our native bush.