Deluge

It rained and rained in the mountains of Tibet last month and last fortnight floods swept China. Flood waters of the Yangtze reached a new high level--52 ft, 9 in. Villages were swept away. Yellow waters spread out to cover 12%, of the arable land in the valley. A stark report came from the stricken district to Nanking: THE AUTUMN CROP IS RUINED. 23 MILLIONS ARE HOMELESS.*

Hankow was near the center of the flood area. Thousands of frightened, bedraggled peasants poured into the native city that sank lower and lower beneath the Yangtze wraters. With the streets waist-deep in the swirling, dirty flood, fire broke out. There was no way to fight it. A few brave watermen pushed their little sampans from house to house trying to rescue trapped families, but scores died. There was danger of pestilence. Foreign correspondents were less interested in the millions of homeless and thousands of dead than in two U. S. citizens, Mrs. Webb and a Mrs. Fielding, who were attacked by a mob of hysterical coolies in Hankow's former German concession, had their dresses torn off, were badly frightened.

The Nationalist Government moved promptly for relief. A committee was organized at Shanghai with the ablest man in Chiang Kai-shek's Cabinet at its head, Finance Minister T. V. Soong, Harvard man, scion of the great "Soong Dynasty" of Shanghai bankers, and President Chiang Kai-shek's brother-in-law. Minister Soong adjusted his glasses, went to work.

"The catastrophe," said he, "is of such gigantic proportions that the Government cannot, as in the case of previous disasters, appropriate small sums of money and leave relief principally to local private enterprises.

''The Yangtze basin is the most prosperous and economically the most important part of China. It is a matter of preeminent national necessity that our efforts be designed not merely to save the unfortunate inhabitants but also to restore the productivity of the region."

His first move was to send Chinese planes out over the district to make an accurate report of the extent of the damage. His second was to appoint John Earl Baker, U. S. adviser to the Chinese Ministry of Railways, an associate of the National Flood Relief Commission. Railman Baker has already had much experience in flood relief work. The Standard Oil, the British-American Tobacco Co. Ltd., the Bank of China, the Millers' Association offered to cooperate, helped with preliminary plans. From the Vatican Pope Pius XI sent some $13,000.

P: In four days nearly five feet of rain fell in Manila last week, almost a record even for the Philippines. The rain, plus the edge of a China Sea typhoon, plus the highest tide of the year flooded two-thirds of the city, rendered 3,000 homeless. Police and native canoes evacuated the drenched inhabitants.

P: London reported the wettest day of the wettest summer in 40 years last week. The Thames was up. The London fire brigade received hourly calls to pump out flooded houses. At Silverdale. near Stoke-upon-Trent, the whole (town took to the upper stories. Streets, fields, and lower stories were awash.

P: Spain was dry. Into dusty Lorca in southern Murcia marched a raggle-taggle collection of 2,000 farm laborers from the mountain villages of Abiles, Dona Ines, La Paca. Some came in carts, some swung their brown heels against the moldy sides of sad-eyed donkeys, but most were on foot, faint from hunger. They had come to Lorca to live. Not for seven years, said the spokesman, had a drop of rain fallen on Abiles, Dona Ines, or La Paca.

*Chinese used to say that floods on the Yangtze-kiang augured the fall of the imperial dynasty. Engineer Herbert Clark Hoover, who has fought floods in China as well as in Mississippi and New England, explains that this Chinese saying makes excellent sense. The levees of the Yangtze are protected by willows. Vigilant police are required to keep the peasants from cutting the willows for firewood. When a dynasty degenerated, so did its police, the willows were cut, the river left its banks.

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