28 MAY 1932, Page 3

A Life for Five Shillings

The one fact that matters about the Chinese flood situation and the relief work in progress is that five shillings subscribed now will keep alive a man or woman or child who will otherwise be dead before grain from the spring harvest becomes available in fora• or five weeks' time. The easy comment that a little reduc- tion of China's excess population would do no harm is beside the mark. The floods have reduced overpopu- lation tragically enough as it is, and no relief funds in prospect will end the process of reduction yet. But they may limit it, and the life or death of a father or mother or child in a Chinese peasant's family means nothing very different from what it means in an English farmer's.

tale telegraphed in statistics is written in reality in human misery and despair. All sums sent now to the China Flood Relief Committee, 2 Eaton Gate, S.W. 1, will be cabled immediately to Shanghai to buy the dying back to life.