THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1907. THE FAMINE IN THE EAST.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8351, 7 February 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1907. THE FAMINE IN THE EAST.

While Australasia is enjoying a series of good seasons it is unfortunately true that great districts in the East are not merely suffering from bad seasons, but are actually in the throes of famine. Japan, China, and Russia, which between them Vccupy the whole of the vast area lying between the Pacific Ocean and the Baltic Sea, are enduring this affliction in that grim Oriental fashion which comes from repeated experience of Starvation in the land. While it is known that in India itself the great resources and magnificent organisation of the British rulers are being strained in many districts to carry them through until the next harvest without exceptional suffering. For in India, alone of the Eastern countries, has it been recognised that' famine is' t : a recurrent feature of the national life, and there alone has a policy been officially adopted which is based upon the example set by Joseph in Egypt when he "stored from the fat years for the needs of the lean. It must be admitted, of course, that the Indian system is upon its trial and that the famine fund into which a portion of the Government receitps are annually paid has not yet reached a size which enablles it to stand alone when a great demand is made upon it. And there are not wanting critics who insist that the system which it is attempted to set up must break down of its own weight by the gradual fostering of the whole population to the maximum carrying capacity of the land in good years. The British peace now imposed throughout, the .great peninsula is more profound than it has ever been in China, and the Indian population is increasing and accumulating as it never did before. As in India by positive suppression of lawlessness so in Japan and China by strengthening the hands of the central authority

and rendering rebellion more ■ and more hopeless; the European influence has swollen the populations and made trade or emigration absolutely necessary if they would escape wholesale starvation. In Russia it has long been as bad as it could averagely be for the peasant masses if they would subsist and persist. After good seasons, therefore, the East has enough food to give the great bulk of its 900,000,000 Tartars, Hindoos and Mongols enough to eat; where the harvests fail they are face to face with famine excepting where more or less inefficient State organisation intervenes to keep them. During this winter of 1906-7 tens of millions are starving among them, and hundreds of millions are barely keeping body and soul together.