PLAGUE IN INDIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1020, 22 July 1911, Page 3

PLAGUE IN INDIA.

London, July 19. Mr E. S. Montagu, Undersecretary for India, stated in the House of Commons that there had been 650,690 deaths from plague in India during the last half-year, of which 21,453 were recorded in June. DYING BY MIL.UONS. The precise effect upon India of the present pandemic of bubonic plague (says the special correspondent of The Times) has never been properly considered or estimated. One reason is that the plague has been overshadowed and obscured by other great natural calamities which have occurred in India since the pandemic began. The existence of plague in Bombay was first officially noted on September 23, 1896. In 18967 India endured a a visitation of famine which caused a mortality estimated at 750,000 in British territory alone. This was followed by the greater famine of 1899-1900, in which over 1,000,000 people perished in British districts, in addition to large numbers in native States. By the side of these vast misfortunes the mortality from plague looked at the time comparatively small. Another reason is that plague has become such a commonplace matter in India that its graver consequences are apt to be disregarded. In many parts of the country it is now an incident of daily life. The people outwardly seem indifferent concerning it, though they are really anything but indifferent, as is seen at moments when the death-rate grows high. To many ot the greater officials, though not to the men in “the districts,” it has grown to be merely a part of the ordinary routine of administration. Its larger aspects are lost sight of, or dismissed without much consideration in the hope that another year may bring relief. After reviewing the figures in detail, the writer says: —“We arrive, then, at the very grave inference that in India in the last fourteen years a multitude equivalent to the whole population ot Greater London has perished from one epidemic disease, and that this mortality for the most part represents an excess above the normal deaths. The bulk of the mortality has been confined to three provinces. In the Punjab, in the year 1907 alone, 608,685 persons were registered as having died of plague. Such an appalling visitation must have exercised a profound effect upon the people of the province, yet Government publications may be searched in vain for any satisfactory evidence of its consequences.”