But, in reality, the loss fell on a portion only of the continent, and ranged from total failure of crops in certain sections to a loss of 20 and 30 per cent of the normal crops in districts which are not reckoned as falling within the famine tract.  If to this be added the value of several millions of cattle and other live stock, some conception may be formed of the destruction of property which that great drought occasioned.  There have been many great droughts in India, but there have been no others of which such figures could have been predicated as these.

“But the most notable feature of the famine of 1900-01 was the liberality of the public and the government.  It has no parallel in the history of the world.  For weeks more than six million persons were dependent upon the charity of the government.  In 1897 the high water mark of relief was reached in the second fortnight of May, when there were nearly four million persons receiving relief in British India.  Taking the affected population as forty millions, the ratio of relief was 10 per cent.  In one district of Madras and in two districts of the northwestern provinces the ratio for some months was about 30 per cent, but these were exceptional cases.  In the most distressed districts of the central provinces 16 per cent was regarded in 1896-7 as a very high standard of relief.  Now take the figures of 1900-01.  For some weeks upward of four and a half million persons were receiving food from the government in British India, and, reckoned on a population of twenty-five millions, the ratio was 18 per cent, as compared with 10 per cent of the population in 1897.  In many districts it exceeded 20 per cent.  In several it exceeded 30 per cent.  In two districts it exceeded 40 per cent, and in the district of Merwara, where famine had been present for two years, 75 per cent of the population were dependent upon the government for food.  Nothing I could say can intensify the simple eloquence of these figures.

“The first thing to be done was to relieve the immediate distress, to feed the hungry, to rescue those who were dying of starvation.  The next step was to furnish employment at living wages for those who were penniless until we could help them to get upon their feet again, and finally to devise means and methods to meet such emergencies in the future, because famines are the fate of India and must continue to recur under existing conditions.

“I should like to tell you of the courage, endurance and the devotion of the men who distributed the relief, many of whom died at their posts of duty as bravely and as uncomplainingly as they might have died upon the field of battle.  The world will never know the extent and the number of sacrifices made by British and native officials.  The government alone expended $32,000,000 for food, while the amount disbursed by the native states, by religious and private charities, was very large.  The contributions from abroad were about $3,000,000, and the government loaned the farmers more than $20,000,000 to buy seed and cattle and put in new crops.