Muddy Dragons

Two monster dragons, alternately benevolent and merciless, writhe completely across China in the shape of her two mightiest rivers, the Yangtze which Chinese call "Long River," and the Hwang Ho ("Yellow River"), each more than 2,500 miles long. Last week China's rain gods were pouring destructive torrents into the two River Dragons' veins. Mad with fear, myriads of peasants and town dwellers remembered that as recently as 1931 the Hooding Yangtze chased 10,000,000 Chinese from their homes and killed 140,000 by drowning alone--not to mention the ensuing famine: the greatest disaster of modern times. This year, should both Dragon Rivers rampage at once, they would flood "China's Granary," fruitful valleys peopled by 100,000,000 Chinese.

Yellow Dragon. Famed for centuries as "China's Sorrow" and the "Curse of the Sons of Han," the Yellow Dragon staged its most spectacular Hood in 1852 when it shifted its entire course from the south side to the north side of the Shantung Peninsula. Ever since it has discharged into the sea 400 miles north of its former mouth. Last week the Government experts, prowling anxiously up and down the Yellow River's dikes below Kaifeng. finally telegraphed a nation-wide warning that "almost inevitably" the retaining walls will give way and the Yellow Dragon will revert, roaring and thundering, to its old course.

Long Dragon. Because the Yellow Dragon, broad and meandering, is too shallow for modern navigation, the commerce of the West courses into China chiefly up the Long Dragon, the Yangtze, which is deep enough for foreign steamers and war boats to sail 600 miles inland up to "The Chicago of China," Hankow. Last week the Yangtze rose at the rate of one foot per day until it was a foot higher than any dikes which existed two years ago, but still four feet below the tops of the 7,000 miles of new dikes built last year by hundreds of thousands of Chinese coolies sweating under the guidance of Sir John Hope Simpson. Director General of Flood Relief. Sir John, when he visited the U. S. two months ago, told proudly how the 1,400,000 Chinese which the Chinese Government placed at his disposal piled up and packed down with heavy wooden tamps wielded by six men enough dirt to "put a dike around the earth at the equator six feet thick and six feet high." According to Sir John "the greatest effect was political. The peasant now knows that there is a Central Government who thinks of him. . . . Our flood relief work had a great effect in preventing the spread of Communism."

Last week the Yangtze River Conservancy Commission rushed gangs of coolies to plug holes in the dikes with mattresses of woven reeds. With the Long Dragon still rising at Hankow, the Bund and parts of the French and Japanese concessions were already a foot deep in water. Afraid that even Nanking the capital, only 200 miles from the sea, might be flooded, the Government sent out soldiers who rounded up every coolie they could catch, prodded them out to the Yangtze's brim, kept them working day and night under bayonet guard, piling up dirt and still more dirt.

Muddy water was not China's only trouble. Last week word came from Shensi Province in the northwest, drought and famine-ridden for five years, that peasants were taking to cannibalism.

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