Famine in Northern Europe
In spite of all the advancement of which this age boasts in the direction of mastery over the forces of nature, famine continues to ravage large and populous districts of the earth's surface. Probably at no previous time within a century, perhaps not within several centuries, has so large a territory been subjected to a visitation of this death-dealing scourge. It is computed that at the present date over 400,000 Finns, 200,000 Swedes, and many thousands of Norwegians and Lapps, not to mention multitudes in Siberia and European Russia, are dying of hunger. The worst situation exists in Finland, where, according to the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Times, the Finnish peasants have been reduced to the necessity of trying to sustain life by eating bark, and unripe, frost-spoiled rye and barley, made into bitter cakes, that even the animals refuse to touch. So terrible is the dearth of vegetation, says another account, that even the birds have died by thousands in the forests. Investigations made by the Christian Herald, of New York City, disclose that in the famine provinces there was not during the summer of 1902 more than half a dozen dry days. The crop failure was the most complete in half a century. Finland's grain crop fell short of the average to the extent of $12,000,000. The fishing industry also failed. Every resource was swept away, and multitudes were left with nothing to subsist upon save bread made from unripe rye and barley, which the horses refused to eat. Loaves of barley husks and straw constitute the fare of thousands of families. Those upon the verge of starvation constitute one sixth of the entire population of the country. Relief work is being undertaken by the Christian Herald, in this country, and by the Russian government. This is a terrible picture; but the picture of the world's spiritual famine,—of the multitudes in all countries who are to-day perishing for want of the bread of life,—could it be truthfully drawn, would be still more terrible. And upon us devolves the work of its relief.