June 2.
The news we published in our issue of the 30th ultimo of the death of two workers in the mine area of Kansu brings vividly before us the perils that must be faced by those who undertake the dangerous and thankless task of famine alleviation. A Chinese assistant, Mr. Liu Chi-tien, was murdered by rowdies while—superintending labour relief which is one of the best forms of helping those who can no longer help themselves. It is not difficult to picture what. occurred. A number of the starving peasants had been engaged on work on the Satochea canal, the relief funds thus accomplishing the double purpose of giving food to the hungry ani improving a valuable channel of irrigation, The mean fellows of the baser sort in the district wanted to levy toll on the workers, either by compelling the labourers, who are chosen from the most heavily stricken famine sufferers and, therefore, least able to stand up for themselves, to part with some of their scanty earnings, or by demanding a cumshaw from the administrators of the famine fund for their gracious permission to allow them to succour the starving. It the same kind of terrorism as we hear of from Ichang where the coolies' union insists that' cargo booked through from kow to Chungking shall be unloaded by one gang of cooli landed at one jetty, then taken in hand by another gang and reloaded on the same boat from another jetty, There is no reason in the world why this should be done and very cogent reasons why anything 30 ridiculous should be immediately stopped, but mob law is king in many parts of China and these things happen, to the disgust and discouragement of those who would fain help the starving masses. And so one man has lost his life ina brave endeavour to make the famine funds reach those that were most in need and we ha not yet heard whether work has been discontinued in consequence and the starving left to starve, which will in no wise disconcert? the bullies who did this dirty work.
Miss S.J. Garland, the other worker whose death" was announced at the same time, fell a victim to typhus fever, that deadly scourge that follows in the wake of famine and makes the work of distributing relief as dangerous as the front line ina battle. We have no figures of the total number that have fallen by this dread disease but the China Inland Mission, with which Miss Garland was connected, lost five workers last year and already five have died in this. Most of these were experienced men and women ai knew well the risks they ran coming into contact with crowds of starving people, every one infected with the loathsome insect that is a carrier of the plague. They cannot all be helped. Mr. Andrews told us, when lecturing in Shanghai on famine conditions inthe North, that the committee had made a selection of those they would attempt to save. They would harden their hearts and refuse help to those too far weakened to survive, They had only a certain amount of food and an unlimited number of claimants, hungry, clamouring for something, anything, to sop the gnawing ' pain of amply stomachs. They crowd the distributing centres. Their pinched, woe-begone faces plead louder than any language. They clutch at the foreigner's garments for it is life itself that is at stake. But the bed rock fact remains that there is a limited supply to meet an unlimited need. In one of Miss Garland's last letters she said that they wanted begin the distribution of food to the starving but could not do so yet lest their available supply of grain should not last till the spring harvest could be reaped. Evidently she, and her fellow workers, felt that the time had come to endeavour to tide the sufferers over the last dreadful days while the corn was ripening in the ear and food was at its scareest, They did so and end came swiftly. One mission has, as we have said, lost ten workers. How many other missions und the International Famine Relief Commission hav lost we do not know. We do not doubt that there will be others to step into the gaps and carry on the work with eyes open to the danger they run in doing 0.
S.J. Garland was a devoted and talented missionary. She was an Australian and came Kansu_a few months ago,:0 China in 1891, She did a great deal of work in perfecting the Braille system for teaching Chinese blind to read. She also worked on various systems romanization of Chinese, No Perfect system has yet been found but the National Government has again ordered that the Chu-yin phonetic system shall be taught in all schools, We may be sure that an impetus will be given to learning in China when the A.B.C, replaces the ideograms at present in use; at least in primary classes. In these activities Miss Garland's one' aim was to help the poorest peo, ple, for it was these that appealed most strongly to her sympathy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.