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a serious matter at the age of seventy-four. But there was a section of the Press that saw nothing good in an act of sacrifice on the part of a Minister, even though it might have brought him near to death's door. In reply to them my friends who went down with me to North Bengal addressed the following letter to the Press:

TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'STATESMAN'

Sir,—We have been painfully surprised by a perusal of the leading article in your issue of last Wednesday. It constitutes an attack on the Ministry of Local Self-government, which is the more surprising in view of the fact that the Statesman has always been forward in expressing its appreciation of the work Sir Surendranath Banerjea has been doing ever since he became Minister. The administration of relief in the flooded area appertains to the Reserved Branch of the Administration, and not to the Ministry of Local Self-government, and it is the ignoring of this cardinal fact which vitiates the outlook of the writer of the article in question; and leads him into erroneous, and we may add ungenerous, suppositions regarding the attitude of Government as a whole towards the problem of relieving distress, and of the reserved half of the Government of Bengal towards its transferred counterpart.

Leaving aside the above matters, however, we deem it our imperative duty to enlighten your readers regarding the fine work done by Sir Surendranath himself for relieving the distress in the affected districts. Although having little concern with the matter as Minister, he was deeply moved by the tales of woe pouring into him from the various sources, and, as soon as he got a reliable account of the ruin and devastation worked by the floods, from the Chairman of the Calcutta Corporation, who had come up to attend the meetings of the Select Committee on the Calcutta Muni- cipal Bill, he summoned a few friends, including the Hon. Mr. P. C. Mitter, Mr. S. R. Das and Mr. Mullick, and started a fund there and then, to which both the Ministers contributed a thousand rupees each; and decided to proceed to Santahar by the next day's down mail, which, it is now public knowledge, he did. We who had the honour of accompanying him with Mr. Krishna Kumar Mitter, who had in the meantime arrived in response to an urgent telegram from Sir Surendranath, wish most distinctly to testify to the untiring zeal and devotion to duty which characterized his move- ments and acts during the whole time that he stayed at Santahar. He met Dr. Bentley on arrival in the morning, and had the gratification of learning that fourteen officers of the Health Department had been on the spot from the outset, working strenuously in their respective spheres; and Sir Surendranath personally saw them carrying on the work of burying or burning (as circumstances required) the floating carcases and dead human bodies, as he trollied down the railway line towards Bogra, along with

Mr. Krishna Kumar Mitter and others, including the Sub-divisional Officer