Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-12-25
BIG THING FOR DELHI
Durbar Attracting Great
Crowds to India.
PRICES ARE SOARING
DEsT1TuT1oN AMONG THE POOR
OF LONDON.
Outlook for the Present Winter the
Worst It Has Been in
Years.
Special Correspondence Of The Evening Star.

Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.
LONDON, December TO- 1902.
Delhi Is going to make as good a thing of
the forthcoming durbar commercially as
London did not make of the coronation.
The ships are going over crowded to Bonn
bay. and 1t is difficult to get a passage I'M
less 1t Is applied for long in advance. I
hear that there will be great many Amer
leans there to see the American queen,
Lady Curzon, carry of the honors. for she
and Lord Curzon are expected to be the
real soul of the durbar. while the Duke
and Duchess Of Connaught will be only
figureheads. The ordinary hotel rate N
India is $1.60 day. More than a month
before the opening Of the durbar the Delhi
hotels had raised their tariff for the spe-
cial fortnight to so day, or just twelve
times their ordinary prices, and were freely
booking at that price. The price stands
now at $25 day. The ordinary fare for
an ancient victoria with two broken down
horses is s125 day, but the Punjab gov
eminent have just issued, a regulation that
during the months from December Is to
January Is the maximum fare shall be $l3,
or ten times the ordinary rate. The whole
turnout as it stands, horses and all, only
fetches 500 at the outside at ordinary
times. But in this single month the for
tunate owner will be able to make 500 or
their good times. Their wages are being
doubled on condition that they undertake,
under penalty Of a fine, to remain in their
situations until the end of the durbar.
1t is officially announced in India that
the proposal to invite all the surviving vet
Grams of the mutiny, both British and ma
tive. to attend the durbar has been with
drawn. 1t was found that the list of those
who would be willing to attend if invited
was / 400 or 1,5cO. To convey such a large
number of persons to Delhi and entertain
them there for fortnight would have cost
about $4,000 SO the government has decid-
ed to invite only the officers and warrant
and non-commissioned officers who took
part in the siege of Delhi, or the defence
and relief of Lucknow. Even SO, the num-
Der to be invited will be about three hum
dred. of whom about seventy will be Euro
peans and EuraSians, and the rest natives.
The camp for these veterans has been APP
propriately fixed behind the ridge near the
vicerOy's. This is the very spot where the
loyal troops retreated with the women and
children at the capture of Delhi, and it was
here the avenging column returned. Thus
MANY of these veterans have camped about
the place where forty-fve years afterward
they are to be entertained with honor.
London's Poor in Distress.
We are not yet in the middle Of Deem
Der, but already the cry of distress from
the poorer quarters Of London is becoming
terribly loud and menacing. The usual WIN
ter appeals are being made with an urgen-
cy which generally belongs to a protracted
frost or other exceptional cause. The bishop
of London. who must be admitted to know
more about the actual condition of the very
poor than most wearers of a inter are sup
posed to do, pleads on behalf of the suffer-
ers, and so does the aged Archbishop of
Canterbury, as well as others all sides
connected with relief works.
The resources of the voluntary organiZa-
lions that attempt to meet the wants of the
most urgently pecessitOus are strained be-
yond any recent precedent, and their work.
ers are among the first to acknowledge how
small in proportion to the need is the ut
most they are able to accomplish. An off,
cial of the social wing of the Salvation
Army tells me that at it's several depots
in various parts of London for the distri-
button of food and its night shelters the
number of applicants is abnormal, and that
while every possible effort is made to avoid
sending empty away from the places at
which soup and bread are distributed any
of the homeless poor found in the streets in
the early hours of the morning. many have
to be refused admission to the shelters af-
ter the space is fully occupied.
Fires are now nightly built in the streets
and hundreds of homeless and flreless
gather around them in sodden and hopeless
looking groups Povery is fearful thing
in winter in London. The bitter weather
and the influx into the labor market Of
army reservists discharged on their return
from South Africa are not the only causes
Of the present distress, but the slackness
In many departments of trade, the lack Of
employment In the docks. and the increased
prices of some OF the necessities of life
are factors which bring restitution to large
numbers of casual workers and their fami-
lies always lowering on the border line Of
want
There are now 1900 more Londoners in
receipt of poor relief than was the case in
the corresponding week year ago But
figures do not tell all You need to see the
lean, gaunt. hungry faces of men and wo-
men at street corners. the eruption of street
singers, of able-bodied persons chanting
their monotonous way through the thor
oughfares. Clergymen with whom 1 have
talked regard the outlook as very dark and
worse than 1t has been for years.
The Irish Land Question.
The land question in Ireland gets no bet
ter Indeed, it is in worse condition than
for many years. The feud goes on be-
tween landlord and tenant, and between
different cliques of landlords in such a
way as forbids hot-headed Irishmen to
consider plans that would commend them
selves to Arglo-Saxons. The matter of
fact outsider generally overlooks the sub
tie but powerful influence of race and
heredty upon Irish opinion. In Ireland, as
in India. the caste feeling is still deeply
rooted. and the prejudces of dead-and- gone
ancestors are preserved. sometimes uncon-
sciously, by their descendants
1t is not religion which separates the
different classes of Irish society so much
as race. 1t is a remarkable chronological
fact that the two races-the planters" of
Cromwell and William III and the descen-
dants Of the dispossessed natives-are no
nearer fusion today than they were in
penal times Indeed. the hereditary
planter" or undertaken does not look
upon himself as an Irishman at ALL and
the obstinate Lelt cannot be induced to de-
scribe himself English
The landlords are trying to arrange a
conference between themselves to arrange
matters. but the Marquis of Londonderry,
the Duke Of Abercorn and Lord Barrymore
are against a conference: the pro-confer-
ence leaders are Lord Castletown. the Earl
OF Dunraven and Mr. Walter McMurrough
Kavanagh. To the average man there
seems no reason why these personages
should disagree SO profoundly upon a Ques-
ton effecting all alike. They are all Prot
estant' unionsts and great owners of prop
erty. but they differ in race and hereditary
sympathies. Lord Londonderry and the
Clan Hamilton would rather see that
country In English agrarian troubles than