San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-06-24
WHICH TALE is TRUE?

4
Tuesdays Light and Wednesdays
Express contain lugubrious accounts OF
the condition in India. The wires are
loaded for this report at the instance
of returned missionary, who, after
ringing the changes on the terrible de-
vastation of the plague turns his at
Itention to the starving condition Of the
people. concerning which he says:
1.-THE famine is the great thing there
now. This morning got letter say
ing that the people were dying by hun
dreds. 1t is hard to know how to help
them, as they have no seed to sow,even
II rains come. and their blowing oxen
have died. There is plenty Of grain In
India, but the merchants have 1t stor-
ed up in hidden pits and won't sell it
except at ruinous prices"
| This Is the missionaries side of the
story. Opposed to that is the mer-
camille side, the character Of which
may be gathered from the following ex-
tract from Montreal journal. The
Herald:
"a Bombay merchant who has just
arrived in New York, in an interview
on the Indian famine, says that mot
a single person has yet died Of starva-
ton in India" He also states that
the current reports of death from star
walton and the pictures exhibited
showing the natives In an emaciated
and miserable condition are not only
overdrawn, but are outrageously
false"
AS between these two statements
the intelligent reader must take his
own choice. That both cannot be true
is only too evident. The probabilities
are that the truth lies between the two
accounts. There is no doubt on the
one hand that the people Of that coun-
try have needed assistance and need
ed it badly, and there is no doubt on
the other hand that the necessities of
the people have been used as argu-
ments to increase contributions for
religious purposes in that country.
The pocketbooks of American philan-
tropists have been drawn upon to
meet an exaggerated condition, and the
sympathy that has found expression
in large contributions to the various
church funds has been worked upon
by graphic tales of suffering that ex-
ist largely in the Imagination. There
is no need of Americans diving 80
deeply into their pockets to relieve a
distress that is disputed, and which
at it's best is not our first concern. Let
Great Britain and Britain's Queen, who
have just spent millions upon royal
pageant put their hands in their pock-
cts for the relief of India, while the
wealth and the poverty of the United
States are alike enlisted TO save the
nearer people of Cuba from actual
starvation. 1t is too much the fashion
all over the habitable globe to come
down upon the United States for the
means to pay the charities of the
other nations. India, China, Armenia,
Ireland or the Uses of the sea, it is
all one. Uncle Sam pays s110000,00
every year into the Golfers of the old
world travel and art to keep them
afoat, and cares for half a million
annually Of their surplus populations
that are sent over here, and that is
enough. AS for heather contributions,
let us look at home and read the GRIM
inal record of the day, and go down
into our brains first and into our pock-
cts afterward, to meet the worse than
heather darkness that is found upon
our own soil.