REFUGEES FROM RUSSIA

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 267, 5 August 1920, Page 5

REFUGEES FROM RUSSIA

THE COUNTRY "ONE GREAT MADHOUSE." The Rev. F. W. North, a British chaplain at Moscow, who arrived at Southampton recently with a party of refugees from Russia, thus summed up the preRon'fc condition of the country where ho lias lived nnd worked for the past fifteen years: "Russia has become 0110 great nladhouse." As ho spoke on tho upper deck of the transport Dongola I looked below to the main deck (writes a special correspondent of tho "Daily Hail). It was crowded with men, women, and little children, mainly British, all pale and drawn after months of hardship and semi-starvation, It was a terrible picture of what Soviet Government means in Russia. "Most of them," said Mr. North, "could have eked out some sort of existence if they, had stayed behind, but all are determined to overcome any obstacle rather lhan , endure any longer the misgovernment of the Soviets, nt is all 0110 great madhouse." For the rest, Mr. North's story, apart from tlio round of daily hardships, was mninlv one of robbery. The Bolsheviks stole his church funds, a fund for toio starving British people in Moscow, and his silver. Fiifally they stolo Mrs. North's jewel 9, and slio recovered a few of tho least valuable only by paying 10.000 roubles (nominally about .-£1000). Mrs. North, who shiclc to her husband through thick and thin, is a frail woman whose face bears ma'dy' traces ot tho hardships and the long nervous strain which she has undergone during over two years. I asked her to describe the daily lifo under the Bolshevik regime from the point of view of an English wife and mother. "It is impossible for any decent citizen," she replied at once. "Family life has disappeared. Privacy does not exist; everybody's life is a public affair. The Soviet lays down a certain cubic space as tho proper accommodation for a given number of persons, with the result that most Russians are now living in one room, where they live, eat, and cook.". Another Englishwoman, Mrs. Louise Kuessner, the widow of a Russian, who has lived twenty years in Russia, ga.ve a picture of life under tho Soviets, which exactly coincided with that drawn by Mrs. North. "There is no such thing na tho sanctity of marriage," she said. "Divorco is so easy in Moscow that a woman could almost liayo a fresh husband every day if she wished." Mrs. Kuessnes's daughter described tlio Soviet system of forced labour. "Mother and I," "he said, "were practically slaves and had to work aR wo wero ordered. Sometimes I would be sent to the station to shovel snow, while mother would be made to help clean the streets." Almost all 'tho refugees agreed that sooner or later the Bolshevik Government must fall, Mr. North was especially emphatic. "If we leave them alone and do not trade with them," he said, "I believe that tho end of the Soviet rule is bound 'to come won. Most of their transport is ruined, and the people aro demoralised and refuse to work."