CHINA: Death Under the Elms

"That people pull down their houses, sell their wives and daughters, eat roots and carrion, clay and leaves, is news nobody wonders at. It is the regular thing . . . The poorest people are dependent on willow and elm leaves, elm bark, and the various weeds . . . All the elm trees about many of the villages are stripped of their bark as high as the starving people can manage to get; they would peel them to the top but haven't the strength . . ."

So wrote the Rev. Timothy Richard, a Baptist missionary, in 1878. Last week, with famine abroad in the land again, China's Communist masters feared that the famine of 1950 might be the equal of 1878's, when 9,500,000 died.

In the Red capital of Peking, Communist Vice Premier Tung Pi-wu bluntly told a relief commission: "We are faced with a serious war against spring famine

. . . China now has 7,000,000 famine refugees." Then Tung quoted a proverb: "It is the tail of the famine," he said, "rather than the head, that should be dreaded." Tung was warning his hearers that the next three months would be crucial. After that, the June harvest of winter wheat and the first rice crop would bring food.

The famine of 1950 crept inexorably across China's traditional "hunger belt," some 200,000 square miles of fertile flatland that stretches from the Yangtze River to the Great Wall. Last summer, droughts had parched the flatlands; in the fall the Yellow River went on a record rampage to destroy still more farmlands. Farther south, a secondary hunger front was in the making in the normally rich Yangtze delta, hit last summer by the worst floods in 18 years. Rare in China's history have been years when famine struck in both the Yellow River and Yangtze valleys at the same time.

To combat the famine, Communist Tung outlined some measures. "By the mountain, eat from the mountain. By the river, eat from the river." Tung ordered the refugees put to work rebuilding the dikes of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, promised loans for seed grains, sent soldiers to work in the fields. Government workers and soldiers were exhorted: "Save an Ounce of Rice." Tung claimed that the "head" of the famine had been dealt with, but admitted that the job had been botched in places. Refugees had been permitted to slaughter or sell irreplaceable work animals. "Bureaucracy," said Tung, "is still strong."

China's last big famine years were 1931 and 1932, when 2,000,000 died despite some 500,000 tons of food shipped in by the U.S. This year, cut off from the West by the choice of their new rulers, the Chinese wondered whether Russia could or would help them.