[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Anglo-Indian officials are
accustomed to be corrected by the superior wisdom of English journalists ; but the particular piece of folly with which you charge them in your article on "Russian Illusions" (Spectator, August 19th) is one which I think they cannot plead guilty to. You wrote : " They " [the men who advise the Czar] "are just like the Indian officials who often offer millet to a rice- eating population, and stare with amazement because famine- stricken villagers refuse the unaccustomed and indigestible food." I have a pretty wide acquaintance with the literature and histories of Indian famines, and I cannot recall any instance of such an error as this. It was Buckle who con- ceived that the whole Indian population subsisted upon rice, and drew elaborate conclusions as to the effect of such a diet on national character; but no Indian officer is likely to have made such a mistake. The nearest approach to what you state which I remember was that in the famine of 1877 the Government sent Burmese rice to Madras, and because it was prepared and husked in a slightly different way from what they were accustomed to, many of the starving people hesitated and grumbled at having to eat it. But if you had looked closer at home, you might have found a more exact precedent with which to barb the arrow of your sarcasm. It was the English Government which imported stores of American maize for the food of the sufferers in the Irish famine of 1847, and the unreasonable creatures, in the pangs of indigestion, rewarded their benefactors, as you say, with
renewed complaints.—I am, Sir, &c., C. A. ELLiorr. Fernwood, Wimbledon Park.
[We had no intention whatever of being sarc Ratio, but quoted a story we have repeatedly heard as an illustration of kindly error.—En. Spectator.]
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