MILLIONS MUST DIE

Evening Star, Issue 17927, 24 March 1922, Page 1

MILLIONS MUST DIE

DR NAN SEX OX THE RUSSIAN FAMINE. The following is an official summary of Dr Nansen’s address on the Russian famine delivered in London on January 31 Dr Nansen, speaking at the Queen’s Hall last night the Russian famine relief work, of which ho is in charge, was able to show his audience a series of films and lantern slides as evidence of the urgency and seriousness of the problem. Ho went into detail a.s to tho extent of tho famine, pointing out that there were provinces, with populations of teip to fifteen millions, whose crops had entirely failed, and who could 1 not live through the winter without outside help. Altogether, taking tho famine area as a whole, he said, one had to contemplate one of the most appalling disasters of the kind that had happened in recorded history. A region was threatened in which there were 33,000,000 people, of whom at least 19,000,00 were directly and seriously menaced with death, and of whom millions must inevitably die. The problem was not a matter of a few months, because tho famine-stricken population lived on the products of tho soil, and) as they had not tho means of cultivating the ground for ’ next spring, we were lighting not offly the famine of this year, but the certainty, unless means were taken, of a famine next year as well. Criticising the failure of the Governments of Europe to oopo with the situation, Dr Nansen pointed out that, apart from tho humanitarian point _of view, Europe could not on economic grounds afford to allow one of the greatest granaries and markets of the world to become a depopulated desert. So far as guarantees were concerned, he said, the agreement which he had made with the Soviet Government gave him absolute control from start to finish. He was prepared 1 to claim that every ounce of food given would reach those for whom it was intended, and he challenged anybody to deny that assertion. Lies had been invented about his agreement, about looting of trains, about the work of the Soviet authorities, and about the work of the British, Save-the-Childrcn Fund, and these lies had meant the death of millions.

Dealing with the economic argument that Europe in its present state could not afford to help Russia before helping itself, he emphasised his view that Russia was a necessary element in the reconstruction o£ Europe, which could not take place until Russia itself was reconstructed, an enterprise which was in its turn impossible as long as the famine raged on the Volga. Unless within two months food, agricultural implements, seeds, and so on could be sent to this region it would become a depopulated desert, and Russia could neither export food) nor bo an effective market. The enterprise which ho was conducting was not only charitable and wise, but also good business, the cost of relief being only three millions sterling, in addition to the 20,CQ0,C00dol already voted by Congress in America. In answer to the criticism that the Soviet Government has not itself dealt with the famine, ho said that it liadi done and is still doing what it could. It bad been able to secure the sowing of a great area of the wheat lands on the Volga, and it had fed and was now feeding three and a-half million - people in the worst part of the famine region. On the other band, the Government was not strong. The economic condition of Russia war? as weak as its critics had made it out to be, and it was because he knew last September that the Soviet authorities could not by themselves deal with the problem that be had told the Assembly of the League of Nations that, whether Governments Helped or not, they would go on through private charity and do what'was possible.