The Holbrook news., 1912-03-22

96) l made VlSlI CO the Iam- O inc district of Anhui and what
 we then saw may be taken as characteristic of other districts in China where famine is still raging.
 It requires a close observer, an ex- perienced famine relief worker, to locate the trouble from outward ap- pearances- But such a man can point 1t out to the visitor like myself. Ap- preaching a village, you see that all but these pretty green fields is bare and desolate. Many of the trees that beautify every town stand gaunt and white, stripped of their bark. A number have already gone in decay, writes G. C. Hanson from Shanghai. in the Chicago Daily News. Crows inhabit them. The willows still stand and furnish some hope for the peo- pie, for their leaves, as soon as they are a little larger, will serve for food. On the threshing floors there is not q vestige of the usual straw; all has been sold or eaten. The chickens and the pigs, which are a part of every farmers household, have gone long ago. Even the omnipotent dog has O0CA oldA NC0 IO 0<Sc~lA VI Aoo oCA NCa as nourishment for men. And as for donkeys, horses and cattle, whereas almost every household possessed one or more last summer, village is for tunate which can display one today.
 The doors of the houses and their straw roofs have been sold. The mud walls still stand only because they have no market value. But even some of the walls have been carried away by the flood waters. The first cause of the desolation was a terrific rain fall in July of last year, covering the wheat land for thousands of square miles. The heavens seemed to open and pour down upon the whole fam inc region. In a period of hours a blanket of water from nineteen to thirty inches deep came down and the possibility of a fall crop was instantly wiped out
 The people of Anhui and northern Kiangsu are supported from May un- til December by their spring wheat crop. In the autumn another crop is harvested, part of which Is sold. But if this crop be wiped out starvation ensues.
 More than 100000 people are on the governments relief list, about million of whom are actually reached The joint Chinese foreign committee has reached another half million. As a result not so many people are dy- ing now as in the months when the snow covered the ground. During March it was estimated, though no enumeration was possible, that be- tween 2,OO0 and 5000 persons died daily from hunger and cold, but now it is believed that the famine levers of the warmer weather are claiming all told not more than few hundreds each day.
 We stood in the village street studying the people, Cochran trying to decide whether one distribution of grain would keep the people here alive until the time of harvest, for every ounce of grain is also needed elsewhere-indeed. many villages throughout this vast tract of devas- tated country are not even on the lists for distribution
 The greatest sufferers are always the last to gather in crowd. They are too weak to move about quick ly with the stronger ones. In one place at distribution of grain 21 of these less fortunate people were trampled to death. Yet there is much kindness among them; 1t is not all a selfish struggle for one's own exist ence.
 That middle aged man who has just Joined the crowd about us, whose neck is so thin that the bones and tendons of his throat are visible, is typical of class. When the famine first drew near last November he and his wife put their household posses sions, his aged mother and the chill dren on a Wheelbarrow and started