Further south, in the Hsien-hsien istrict, according to a report of the Catholic Mission there, the inhabitants of 380 villages are starving, and to keep them supplied with cereals of the cheapest kind would mean an expenditure of $57,000 a day. This will give some idea of the magnitude of the disaster.
As the greater part of the country is still waterlogged, it is, of course, impossible to plant the winter wheat, so that the unfortunate people can expect no relief even next spring. Moreoever, the drainage of the Worth China plain is so bad, that, unless quite extraordinary and energetic measures are taken to drain off the flood waters and dredge the. mouth of the Tientsin river, the land is not likely to be free of water before next year's summer rains. That would mean another crop failure and two years' of famine at the least.
So far no general measures seem to have been taken to cope with this immense disaster. In the immediate vicinity of Tientsin a few hundred thousand dollars have been allotted for food distribution; but this is a to ship cotton upriver from Hankow, over the dangerous Yangtze rapids.
The completion of the new highway solves this serious economic problem as truck-loads of cotton pour in a steady stream along the new highway into Szechuen for distribution to the west and southwest of China.
Sian has been heavily bombed byj Japanese aircraít, he said, but the casualties were small as the populace found shelter in caves in the hill-sides.
With the Japenese attack in north Hunan repulsed, however, the Chinese are returning to Sian with greater confidence than ever in the security of the northwest provinces.—Reuter, mere drop in the ocean of misery. In a few districts in central Hopei the male inhabitants of all the villages have been put to work, compulsorily and without pay. either to repair roads or, alternatively, to destroy them and build-irrigation ditches, according to the whim of the authorities in control at the moment. In others, projects for dyke and road building have been drawn up, but nothing further is being done. For some reason or other, the authorities will not permit the transportation of grain from areas not affected by the floods to the areas threatened with famine, It is said that the Japanese military authorities do not regard the floods as an entirely unmitigated disaster, seeing that they have rid Hopei of the guerillas. This view would. however, seem to be a very shortsighted one.
Hunan with its fine motor roads and railroads' seemed on the eve of great prosperity, but we are now back to the old sedan chair and walking again for a change. The Siang-Chien Railway is no more, its toad bed and bridges demolished. The Canton-Hankow Railway also has been destroyed from far north of Changsha now to Lokeo in the South. Motor roads leading out of Changsha throughout the province have been destroyed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.