The Procure des Lazaristes has received a heart-rending report from the Vicariate-Apostolic of Chibli Southwest. It is more than a mere account of misery; rather is it the prayer of the stricken for aid in their terrible ordeal.
After describing the district, which is computed to have 8,000,- 000 inhabitants, the report says:
For several months these poor people have been feeding on the Teaves of trees, herbs and anything they are able to find in the fields. With the stalk of sorgho and maize they make a flour which they mako into a soup and thus try to live. One hears by their voice, people reduced to the blackest misery. I are several children who attend ihave seen and heard them and I should weep.
I have seen people Here the letter of Father come 200 li to ask, what?—that. Simon Li, a Chinese priest: they might get the leaves of the "The houses are ready. $1,000 would jharicots which they dry and carry enable me to procure food during seven or eight months for 60 or 70 old women home to feed their families, and I have learned later on that one of or orphan girls. In my district, Tse-shan, some persons have already died of these unfortunates, worn out, with hunger. All the leaves of the trees have fatigue and misery, died on the been eaten. The other day, on a 10 way home. i, trip (4 miles) through a' few vil-Up to now we have helped to re-Tages, I met only one man. 'A regular lieve these poor famine-stricken desert! In WWon-kia-ya I sought my people, more than our means per-Christians everywhere. I found but mitted, counting on kind Provi-tivo old men, two women and little girls crying and about to di dence to come to our aid. Here the principal residence, we have Svicipr aNp Satz or CHItpReN. received more than 2,000 persons.
Letter from Father Ghostin.
In the residences, the missioners Oct. 13, 1920. Weihsien, Chow-are doing all in their power to as-chuang. sist the starving and their resi-Here, as in Sienhsien, there has dences are also encumbered. They been no crop and every day we distribute the alms which they try behold samples of the greatest to collect. Everywhere we have misery: children of a few months, distributed wheat to plant in their of 2 or 3, even of 8 or 9 years fields, and that in addition to age, abandoned by their begging parents along the road, on the out-sie, what was given by Mr. Wang Ta-
skirts of villages, at the doors of Grain anp Stitt More Grain. the rich and the churches. I have With the means at our disposal been told that at Kuoku, a farmer, we might do something, but what usually fairly well off with 20 are the resources of a mission be-mow of land, being obliged to beg fore a misery so great as this, and returning home empty-handed, where millions are necessary to put an end to his life by hanging event the people from dying of himself. Many inhabitants have unger? We could receive child-sold to pawnbrokers their winter ren, old men, we could fill our clothes and bedding, so as i0/ orphanages, ' our hospices, our procure food or sowing-seed.
The schools.
Many missioners have people tear off the leaves of the)built sheds in order to be able to trees, especially those of the elm and the apricot-tree, boil them with wild plants and eat them, trying to deceive their stomachs and allay the pangs of hunger.
You may well imagine what a success became our project of opening schools where children, pagan and Christian, might receive a little help. Its success is almost despairing! 'I have opened schoo's for boys and schools for girls in at least 30 villages, limiting the receive a larger number of poor. But all this conglomeration can only help to. ferment contagious: sickness, particularly in the spring. I believe that the most practical way to act would be to find houses in the villages to place the children and where they would have a school, and be fed, getting two meals'a day, in the evening returning to their homes.
But it is not alone the children who are-to be saved; it is every:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.