THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1907. FAMINE IN CHINA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8338, 22 January 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1907. FAMINE IN CHINA .

It is a remarkable indication of the social condition of China, as well as of the antipathy existing between the West and the.East, that we hear so little of the terrible famine which is , to-day ravaging an area much larger than New Zealand, and twice as populous as all British Australasia. To famine has now been added smallpox, and from the joint visitation it is estimated by those entitled to speak with authority that anywhere between one and two millions of human beings must perish. A quarter of a million in one district, 400,000 in another/ half a million elsewhere, are numbers which come to us comparatively meaninglessly, though they convey a very concise impression of the stupendous mass of people in China. This is the only point which can be held steadily in view when China'and the Chinese are being discussed by a Western people. In that country men' exist, and perish, not merely in millions, but in hundreds of millions;. nor does it appear to be possible to alleviate the miseries through which they periodically pass. For the famines from which China recurrently suffers, the civil wars which convulse her, even the fearful pestilences which sweep over her, are but phases of that monstrous ; aggregation of t human beings upon land which has become too small to carry them all. Over and over

again Christian England has made great efforts to succour the Chinese famine-stricken and to help the Chinese plague-stricken, raising for such purposes vast sums of money, and expending in the work the most self-denying energy. But it has been long observed that the Chinese authorities themselves regard famine and plague, civil war and tumult, with what appears to the Western mind to be cynical and callous indifference. When a famine ravages a district they wait for a harvest to end it. When plague sweeps over the land they wait for it to exhaust its virulence, as plague usually does after taking its toll of lives. And when revolution appears they treat it by Machiavellian methods, watching for an opportunity to suppress it without trouble to themselves, and paying little heed to the burnings of great cities or to the utter annihilation of human life in once populous provinces. From the European point of view such an attitude is infamous. For among civilised nations famine has been practically eliminated, and where it arises is immediately fought by special public and private organisations; plague is similarly treated; rebellion is not tolerated, and civil wars instantly excite the utmost strength of the rival parties in the determination to end them. But we have no right to condemn, the Chinese authorities because their methods differ from ours, and because they appear to be utterly regardless of human life. For with them population perpetually presses upon the means of subsistence and it is only by famine, plague and war that the pressure finds occasional relief. The Chinese must either stop increasing, find an outlet in emigration, or suffer from the positive checks which Nature itself provides. Any relief afforded to them from these positive checks can only be temporary, and must to some extent aggravate the conditions which force them into, action.