There is something terrible, almost terrifying in the letter which appears in our correspondence columns, from the Rev. John griffith, Changteho, Honan. Those who go out into the country near Shanghai have these past weeks seen many signs of a bountiful harvest, nature smiling in her most generous mood. From the China cotton belt too come reports of prospects of an almost unprecedented crop, and if the rest of the world is distraught and on short rations, the feeling aroused is that here at any rate we are blest with plenty. And then comes this thunderbolt from North Honan 5,000,000 people faced with appalling disaster. A few of our readers have known real hunger—some of those, for instance, who were unfortunate enough to spend part of the war in German internment camps—but the majority are unable to speak from personal experience. But that will not alter in their minds the effect of Mr. Griffith's letter. What, after all, are our local troubles in comparison with the relentless fate that seems to await these 5,000,000 souls in Honan? Already they are living on roots and leaves, and unless as: sistance arrives we ate liable to witness practically at our doors catastrophe on a scale nearly equalling that of the Great War. And in a sense it will be worse. In the War people died for an ideal, the rank and file of contending armies believed that it was for hearth and home that they were fighting; but there can be no such consolation in Honan. If they are to die it will be because help. from outside has not arrived.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.