Distress Abroad | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 28, 1903

Distress Abroad.

The present winter is bringing much distress in various parts of the world. It is perhaps in Scotland and France that the greatest misery is found. Thirty thousand persons are famine-stricken in northern Sweden. The starving people are eating pine bark and Iceland moss. Crops have failed; there is an extreme scarcity of fish. The peasants are making pathetic sacrifices to avert the extermination of their hardy northern cattle. Provisions are being shipped to the stricken region, but the prospect is that thousands of persons will die of starvation during the winter, and others will be so weakened by hunger as to be an easy prey to disease, which has already begun its work among them. It will require millions of dollars to save the stricken district from extensive depopulation. Appeal is now being made to the world for relief for the starving fishermen of Breton, France. The fishing colony of this district numbers 150,000, and these are now plunged in misery on account of the sudden, complete, and unexplainable disappearance of sardines from the French coast. These people had grown prosperous, many of them, in the sardine business; now they are ruined, and the merchants who had extended them credit are ruined also, while their families are dying of hunger. Subscriptions have been opened for their relief. Through the blockade of Venezuela, bread has become scarce. Even in Caracas bakeries have been forced to close because of their inability to get flour, while in Guatemala flour has suddenly jumped from 32 cents to 60 cents a pound. There is much distress also in Russia, China, and Korea; while in the large cities of the world hunger, squalor, and cold are busier than ever now. Verily, we are yet in the land of the enemy. We look for a better country, and we know that its coming will be soon.