Show THE PLAGUE IS ABATING IN INDIA Famine However is Now at Its Height PEOPLE ARE DYING BY THOUSANDS HOW TO AID THEM IS A PHOB LE UNSOLVED Government Made a Great Mistake in Not Beginning Aid Earlier Trouble is With the Native Overseers Over-seers Who Rob the People on Every Hand One Man Given Grain to Distribute Free Sold it at Public Auction People are Ct14 New York June 22 Robert P Wilbur Wil-bur an American Presbyterian missionary mis-sionary from Peona India has Just arrived ar-rived In New York In an interview he said The plague is abating in India but the famine is at Us height The plague has been as bad in Peona in proportion to its size as in Bombay where 11000 have died but it Is lessening It moves In a line like a cyclone and was traveling northwest when I left In March None of the people in a city through which the plague passes will get It unless they are in the plague belt or some one who has taken the malady carries it across to another quarter It originated no one knows how in a house in Bombay on a wide street The conditions pf the building were far more sanitary than thousands of others A Calcutta doctor who looked at it said Well if the plague can start In a house like that what will it do when it strikes Calcutta One cause of the spread of the disease among the natives is said to be their practice of walking barefooted Even Insects transmit it A friend of mine entered a house where a plague patient had died to get some of the soil for analysis The government officials refused re-fused to let him have it Receiving permission per-mission to disinfect It he threw some sugar on it and afterward took up the sugar together with some ants which had collected there in his handkei chief and carried them off Every one of the ants took a plague microbe with it The famine is the great thing there now This morning I got a letter sayIng say-Ing the people were dying by hundreds It Ss hard to know how to help them as the have no seed to sow even if rains come and their plowing oxen have died There Is plenty of grain In India but the bunyaps or merchants have it stored ur in hidden nits n1 vont sell it except at ruinous prices Some have thought that a cause o plague was the putting on the market of grain 20 years old The government made a great mistake in not beginning their aid earlier The trouble is with the native overseers who rob the people peo-ple frightfully They are paid in proportion pro-portion to the number of peoole they feed and mix earth in the grain to make their supplies go a longer way I know of one man who got grain to distribute free and sold it at auction The people are mere skeletons living on root and grass Their troubles have bred queer Ideas in them Some of them think Queen Victoria has sent the plague In revenge for daubing of her statue in Bombay Many of them refuse re-fuse to go to the segregation hospitals because they think It Is the intention I of the government to put them out of the way when it gets them there In I some cases they have actually shut upi up-i their houses with dead bodies in them and searching parties have been organized to unearth the corpses The money relief offered hitherto for the distress In India is merely a drop Jn the bucket |