The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-10
Forum. Of Tue People
India, England And Gandhi

To the Editor of The Age-Herald -ss- < -t
 Under the department of .',The Worlds Window" this morning, certain things are said, and more directly suggested, that as it seems to me might receive certain balance in what a wei known America journalist re- ported near thirty years ago on his return from q mission to that country. l write from memory, but from a memory so vividly im- pressed by his report that 1 know the facts preserved there in that sometimes defective container are correct. I think you will not be averse at this date, to republishing them.
 Julian Hawthorne was sent out to India by the Cosmopolitan magazine to report on famine conditions there, which were very se- we're. I recall very distinctly, this much of that report:
 Mir. Hawthorne said: "I went to India deeply prejudiced against two institutions there, the English government and Christian Missions. | left the country on my erturn home converted to both. Bad asFeonditions are, they would be ,immeasurably worst but for the presence of the English government and the missionaries whom I set out to in vestigate with critical disapprOval and whose work and methods I followed up and searched into sedulously, showed me in themselves q type of self-sacrificing human helper un- equalled in my observation. l did not know such band of men existed" And he supple
 
 turned to the native exhibit of human, or to be more accurately descriptive, inhuman qualities.
 l Here was one comprehensive asseveration The great handicap of the English relief work amongst the starving natives was in this fact. That in the distribution of relief over the wide area affected, they have to employ native officers. And practically every time those officers will steal and appropriate the sup | plies if they can. He said they would see their fellow countrymen, women and chil dren die under their eyes utterly unmOved and unpitying and keep the rations to sell. Agani he reported that he found in India ample grain to feed everybody, but that the native merchants held it for prices. recall this in cident very distinctly: Mir. Hawthorne said that visiting the bazaar one day, he found lbuxom, laughing women selling wheat out Eof large open sacks. The floor of the com bound was covered with dust in which few scattering grains were sprinkled. small very young child, so skeletOned that he felt sure she could not survive many days, was picking up these grains and eating them as soon as she had got few in her palm But he said it never occurred to these women to give the child handful and that nobody would have been more surprised than she herself, had they done so. And he quoted from his notebook other equally narrowing cases of utterly soulless indifference. They did not care.
 At that time, had this illuminative per sonal experience in independent confirmation A parishoner invited me to meet at dinner an Indian gentleman of culture, professor in education over there who had spent somC years in European and English universities and had come to this country further tC equip himself. found him yet young, hand some, with an easy command of perfect Eng fish and with the carriage of an aristocrat I referred feelingly to the deplorable conditions then existing in his country. With the smil ing calm of callous unconcern he replied Let them die; there are far too many 9 them anyhow"
 . Returning soon thereafter to his home land, he wrote to our hostess reporting that h' was himself hungry. What did you say t' him?" I asked. "I am glad you know how feels. What about letting them die"
 EDMOND $. BENNETT. Ensley, Ala, Oct. 8, 1924.