Starving People Reduced to Cannibalism "One girl was beaten to death by her mother and her legs were cut off for meat," said Mr. C. H. Lowe, acl-Ing director of the income production department of the China Inter~ national Famine Relief Commission (Shanghai office), in the course of fan address on famines and the work, both past and present, of the com: mission, which -he delivered at the luncheon of the British Universities'
Luncheon Club on Tuesday, May 19, the Metropole Hotel.
Introduced by Mr. Sing Loh Hsu, the Chinese chairman, Mr. Lowe said that the commission' was doing its best {0 eliminate famine entirely from the map of China, The majority of the people in Shanghai did not know of the terrible conditions exist-ug tu the interior, nor realized their seriousness, He wished his listeners to realize that although comparative prosperity might exist in the city, rural disintegration was poisoning the life of the Chinese Inland, He quoted briefly from a loiter he had. received from Shensi in April; famine conditions, said. the welter, were extremely bad, and in many places the people were reduced to outing human flesh. A lltile boy of 3 years of age, he said, was sold to a Mohammedan for $2.60, the fly cents woing to the middleman, China had suffered from at least 68 important floods and droughts. since 1920, and millions of lives had been lost,' It had been estimated, further, that the total loss incurred would have been sufieient to pay for all China's foreign and domestic debts; that the food. supplies destroyed. in 1981 alone would have been sufficient to feod a city the siz of Shanghai for seven years; and that the total Josses in 1984 would have been suf lent. to establish 800 colton mills, capable of giving employment to a million people, It had been said that the Chine individuals, were extremely sells In the Wisastrous famine of 1928 to 1990, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to become bandits or sell their children, and this undoubted.
influenced the' racial traits of the ordinary Chinese, 'The majority of the Chinese were ititerate, and many of the farmers believed that famines were due to forces beyond their control. A small group of people thought otherwise, however, and. September, 1021, the China international Famine' Relief Commission came into being, with the two main objects of conducting relief measures in times of famine, and the promotion of ways and means of preventing future famines.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.