CHINESE HEARTLESSNESS. THE GOVERNMENT IGNORES THE STARVING THOUSANDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 371, 25 May 1889, Page 5

CHINESE HEARTLESSNESS. THE GOVERNMENT IGNORES THE STARVING THOUSANDS.

The following sensible comment is made by the " North China Daily News " on the criminal negligence of the Chinese Government in leaving to foreign missionaries the relief of the starving people in the northern provinces : — •• The very full reports from the northern famine districts which we printed in our columns yesterday, must convince the most sceptical, if there could be any doubters, of the frightful suffering and distress, and the actual mortality from starvation, which is too likely to be soon followed by a still larger mortality from famine fever in Chantung and Manchuria. Almost the whole missionary staff in the two districts is engaged in the work of relief, and yet they report that they are only able to ' touch the fringe of the distress, and have to harden their hearts against applications from bitter poverty and only give assistance where there is actual starvation. This can be averted for the time at the expense of something less than a half-penny a-head a day, and then there is no permanence in it. "Every bit of this work should be done by the Chinese Government.. In the great famine of twelve years ago there was some excuse for the people being allowed to

starve, for the districts afflicted were practically inaccessible. It is true that the inaccessibility was due to the neglect which had allowed the great roads with which China was once furnished to disappear, but that could not be laid to the account of the Government of the moment. It was physically impossible to get tood to the people. There is no such excuse now. The faurino districts are perfectly accessible to foieign missionaries and their wives, and a fortiori to Chinese officials."