TWENTY MILLIONS STARVING

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1912, Page 15

TWENTY MILLIONS STARVING

CHILDREN SOLD INTO HAREMS FOR BREAD. A letter nas been received by the Russian Famine Committee in London from the members of the Famine Committee of the Free Economic Society, one of the 'oldest institutions of the kind in Russia, appealing far help. "There has been an. almost complete failure of crops (it Bays) in twenty provinces of Russia, covering the whole region from Nizhny-Novgorod to Astrakhan, as well as- South Ural and Western Siberia. At least one-half of the 40,000,000 inhabitants of those provinces were doomed .to starvation, for few of them could hope to fmd employment in other parts of Russia in the winter. The population has been brought to- ruin and despair Many become insane and commit euicide. Some among the Mohammedans* sell their children to harems, that they may not see them suffer and hear them cry for bread. Typhus and scurvy are rapidly doing their deadly work among them. "PLEASE, SIR, I AM HUNGRY." " School work is mostly paralysed, for the children answer their teachers with the pitiful cry, ' please, sir, I , am hungry,' instead of repeating their lessons. But as soon as free meals are organised in school the door is besieged by crowds of little ones crying to be admitted, for they ' are as hungry as their elder brothers and sieters.' Teachers write that it breaks their hearts to be forced to refuse these little supplicants. "The Free Economic Society has succeeded in establishing 150 xehef centres in twelve provinces, where close upon 35.000 adults and chilflren have received daily rations — a. pound of .rye bread 'and a. bottle of hot gruel — at an average cost of lid a day. To keep up this network of feeding centres till next harvest 12s per head will be needed." ,