Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1910-01-21

nothing now can prevent the people
from dying by tens of thousands dur
ing the next few months. They expect
this and plan for it, Already, like
rats III their holes, the peasants are
dying in their homes.
The horror of it comes over one in
the concentration camps, where host
OF more than half million refugees
fleeing from pursuing famine, have
gathered outside the walls of several
cities. The world may have seen
worse spectacles of misery than these,
but, if so, have never heard of them
The people have built themselves
straw huts, in no instance large
enough to hold man standing erect,
and in most cases scarcely more than
waist high. In these, on the bare
ground, whole families huddle togeth-
ed. The fiimsy shelters they have
erected serve to keep out the fercest
of the wintry blasts, and the direct
deluge of the rains. But at the best
there is misery beyond words, espe-
cially when it is remembered that they
are only spots upon which to sit and
wait for food or death.
Mrs. Sydenstricker, missionary at
Chin-Kiang, was going through a refu-
gee camp a few days ago when sna
came across the dead body of wom-
an in one of the shacks. Three chill
dren, too small to know that they
were motherless, had been sitting be-
side the cold, unanswering corpse for
"a hours, wondering why their only
friend did not heed them. Worse, to
the point of nerve-shattering, have
been some of the scenes l have had to
witness of women wailing beside their
uncofined dead. l fear I can never
forget the picture of one woman,
standing despairingly beside her hus-
bands body, which lay in the street,
from which she was too weak to lift
it. The restitution here is really unto
death-and penny day would keep
man alive!
Children for Sale.
One of the missionary problems pre-
cipitated by the famine is what to do
about the children that are constantly
being offered for sale, or as gifts to
the missionaries, by parents eager to
prolong the lives of their little ones.
Up until the present no mission has
felt equal to the task of accepting
any waits or of starting a home for
them. The pleas of the parents are
pitiful to the last degree. The lengths
To rrrI,; III,
lustrated by the answer of one Chi
nese woman when her child complain
ed that he was dying of hunger. Il
know it, my child, and l would give
you my arm to eat if it had any meat
ON it." One woman succeeded in sell
ing her baby to a missionary's next
door neighbor for ten cash (half a
cent?, and she was so grateful that
she got down and knocked her head
on the ground. l have had several
fine specimens of Chinese childhood
offered to me.
The sale of children provides pros
porous families with slave girls, adopt
ed sons and prospective daughters-in-
law. 1t also, alas, recruits the broth
els of the Orient, Shanghais traffick-
ers in human flesh are said already to
have gone to the famine field. Mis-
sionaries in the same city are like.
wise taking steps to establish an or
phanage or home for such children as
the parents are disposing of. Many
infants, and invalids as we'll, are be-
ing cast on the roadside to die, or
else being thrown into the canal The
homeless refugees are frantic with
distress, for countless homes las we'll
as several native Christian churches)
we're washed away by the flood which
caused the famine
stream of relief is now on its
way to the famine district, and it must
be maintained for five months. The
missionaries are buster for with en-
listing helpers from other parts of
northern China, with handling freight
boats, wheelbarrow trains, carrying
coolies, distributing stations and other
methods of getting food to the hungry
than they are with preaching. But
their work is elementally Christian.
even if it bears no UNCONVENTIONAL or
missionary label. China and the
world will remember the missionaries
part in this famine.
Copyright. by Joseph B. Bowles)