The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1900-08-01
INDIA'S TERRIBLE PLIGHT.
Cholera. Following Famine, Is
DemOralizing the Country.
People Too Weak to WOrk-successiOm
of Wars Has Distracted Attention
from Conditions There.
(Foreign Correspondence New
Times

Yimes.)
Simla, June 2S.-It is the misfortune
of this country that she has been afflicted
with the most terrible calamity of which
there ls-any record in her thousand years
OF history at the very moment when
events OF most portentous character are
going on IN other parts of the world,
events which serve to distract the atten-
ton OF potential helpers from midas
plany woes. The pronounced failure of
last years. monsoon rains, the fons ct
origo of this unexampled famine, made
itself apparent about September of last
year, or at the very moment when affairs
were rapidly drifting into a highly criti-
cal condition between England and the
South African republics.
In October we knew that we were in for
what was probably the worst famine, the
most acute distress, the country had ever
seen. But simultaneously with this
knowledge came the intelligence that war
had broken out at the Cape and that the
first engagements had actually taken
place. In November and December last
the distress throughout India was most
bitter, hundreds of sahalf-starved people,
who months before had sold their scanty
clothing in order to buy food, perishing
from the bitter cold of the Indian winter.
But, again, this was gust the period of
the war, the period of Britain's reyerses,
which drew the attention of the whole
world away from India toward the trag-
edy being enacted in South Africa. And
so it has been all along.
1t is true that subscription lists have
been opened IN England and that cen
siderable sums have been collected. 1t is
true that kind sympathizers in America
and elsewhere have given largely. Yet
the fact remains that, owing to the SUI
perior interest excited by events else
where, the worst famine of any age or
of any cline has been suffered to pass
before the eyes OF the world comparative
" unnoticed. A famine is a grievous
calamity, buv it has no ostensible great
political interests behind it. 1t does not
lead TO international complications, to
fresh groupings Of the nations. Thus, as
in the present case, though the sum total
of human suffering and death may be
infinitely greater than that brought
about by war, the Indian famine is
relegated to a back page of the newspapers,
a short paragraph in small print is grudg-
ingly given to it, while dozen columns
of the largest type are hardly sufficient
for the purposes OF the war. All this we
in India endured with resignation. We
did our best to help the people, and we
IL
the distress in india would be more ade
quately recognized in England and else
where.
CHINA NOW CLAIMS ATTENTION.
With the fall of Johannesburg and Pre-
toria and the apparent near approach Of
the end Of hostilities, with the departure
homeward of large number of the war
correspondents, we once more began to
hope that the newspapers, and the public
who read them, would be able to devote
some attention to India's dire necessities.
But at the very moment when there
seemed some ground for belief that this
hope might be justified there has oc-
CURED that outbreak in China which has
relegated South Africa itself to a back
page in the journals and the minds of
the public and which has consequently
pushed India more than ever into Obscur-
ity. Even in India itself this China i'm
brOglio has distracted attention from the
famine. We are now engaged in dis
patching 10000 native troops toward
Pekin, with possibly more to follow in a
few weeks time. And all this has Oc.
, CURED at a moment when the distress
caused by the Indian famine is, if not at
Its absolute worst, at least very near it.
/ And yet taking mortality alone, quite
I ND emf far-
sing which is not happily ended by an
early death, one week of the famine in
India claims many more victims than
have eight months of war in South
Africa. Take the single district of Gujer-
at in the Bombay Presidency, for in
stance. The people there have lost some
So per cent Of their cattle. They have
in other ways undergone monetary loss
from which they cannot recover for many
years to come, even with a succession of
bumper seasons. In the month of May,
this year, they were gathered together
at the relief camps opened by government
in tens Of thousands. Here they received
a bare living Wag9, the most the govern
ment can afford to give without democrat
lzing and .pauperizing the entire popu-
lat1On.
THE HORRORS OF CHOLERA.
The intense heat and the gradual
shrinking up of the water supply, to-
gether with the ripening of the melon
crop, fruit which the people are at all
times prone to eagerly and injudiciously
devour, all these causes combined gener-
ated an outbreak of cholera OF an appall-
ing character. Camps which one day
contained 10000 people the next day only
held 2, OOO The grim black death had
broken out, the people had fled sbefore it,