Hundreds of Thousands Wiped Out by Hunger and Cold: Two Million Doomed Before June Hongkong, Jan. 13.
In the course of a speech before the students of the University day, the Governor, Sir Cecil Peking, Jan. 13.
Mr. Grover Clark, special investigator for the China International Famine "Relief Commission, has returned here from a tour of Shansi and Shensi to see what relief work has been accomplished in those provinces.
In Shansi a sum of $3,000,000 was spent in relief last year, two-thirds of which was raised within the province itself, while in Shensi an amount of $2,000,000 was ex: pended, of which a bare $100,000 was raised in the province, Missionaries declare that the money has been properly used.
Despite these large expenditures, Mr, Clark says, conditions in some parts are horrible, as an unusually severe winter has wiped out hundreds of thousands of persons, whose half-starved condition, lack of fires and even of clothes have prevented them from fighting the cold.
In some parts of Shensi the temperature is 30 degrees below the lowest of the past 40 years.
The worst famine section is the Wei River Valley in Shensi, A year ago the population was 6,000,- G00 of which 2,000,000 died during 1929, most of them from famine jeanses, and it is estimated that a farther 2,000,000 are doomed to die before June, as there will be no spring crops because no grain has been planted this winter and because transportation difficulties will vent relief from outs portation has been practically wiped out, animals being eaten and vehicles broken up to make fires In many plices coal costs $112 2 ton and charcoal $190, " while food, where obtainable, is more thea ten times the normal price.
In one group of ten villages the investigators found one room with roof, the rest of the houses having been demolished for the sake of using the wood-work for fuel.
In the Wel River Valley there are 800,000 soldiers, who have forced
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.