IN THE TRACK OF THE FAMINE

Evening Star, Issue 17956, 1 May 1922, Page 8

IN THE TRACK OF THE FAMINE

a TRIP BY J. E. EEOKER ACROSS STARVING RUSSIA. 1 loft Moscow on December 22, and after two days of uneventful journey stopped over at Samara, being unable to proceed any farther because of fearful snow storms, ■which blocked all communication between Orenburg and Samara. Samara is at the centre of (ho famine, area, which stretches north to I’ensa. and south all along the Volga and east to Orenburg and the territory of the Bashkir .Republic, which is partly located in Siberia. I had heard a great deal about the famine in Moscow. 1 have seen many underfed and sick refugees at the hospitals and children's home; but hero at Samara and all along to Orenburg the conditions are beyond description. The station at Samara was crowded to suffocation with refugees from the near-by villages. Poorly-clad, hungry, sick, lilthy, they packed every available space in and outside the station. The largo waiting room, the hall-ways, empty box cars, and everything else that could give any .shelter was crowded with people. How many of them there were it was difficult to estimate, but there must have been several thousand, which is but a small sample of the. twenty more million of the faminestricken. I triad to make rny way to the large waiting room, but it wae impossible to got through without stepping on sleeping children and women heaped on the floor. Besides, the odor which gushed from this mas.'} of human misery was enough to make one faint, So 1 retreated to the open air, and was shocked by the sight of a man who had Just died in a near-by box car, and was being dragged out to the platform to bo added to the pile of dead near at hand, where hundreds of corpses

wore awaiting burial. The pale, lean figure of the dead man, with open, staring eyes and open lips showing a row of clenched teeth suggested’ his desperate efforts to fight the common enemy—hunger. Heart-rending were the cries of little children, who, having lost their parents J or abandoned by them purposely, flocked round the arriving trains, and in a pitiful voice pleaded for a ernmo of broad. They fall upon everything that is thrown out of the car. and scramble in the refuse for bits of food, at the same time fighting 1 packs of hungry dogs, who, driven by 1 hunger, congregate at the station. These | docs,‘some of which are of good breed, 1 are si range animals. They don’t hark, they don’t resist, ami pitifully, like '■ the children themselves, they sneak about. 1 Jt is needless to say that our party could ■ not look indifferent upon these children. ■ Wo gave away our food, as much as we could spare, arm a iso money, which, it is i true, doesn’t buy much, but still scorned ’ to" comfort the little ones with hope of ■ something. Some of the children managed • to get on (he train and ride ahead wilh- ! out any goal whatever, simply driven by i the instinci, of getting away from that plage of misery, but merely going on to oilier places still worse. A few days later we picked up some of these children, among whom ii bright-eyed little boy attracted my attention. He was a little shaver about eight years old. Ho told me that his mother had abandoned him because she could nut feed him, and she probably felt that he would make his way better alone than with her. This does not mean'that, (his mother had no love for her only boy, lint instinctively sm, fell that her child without any protection would probably appeal to Hie sympathy of the travellers. Ho told me that they were trying to make their way to Tashkent, where they Imped to limf the , father, who had gone to look for food * but, exhausted and hungry, the mother finally left him in the station, telling him to wait until she returned. He waited a few days, and at last realised that he was , abandoned, and his pitiful heart-rending cries attracted onr attention. The GovcrnI nicnt has given orders to the conductors

to take along those- abandoned children, as many as they can, and deliver them to the larger stations along the route, where they can be better taken care of. When the little fellow was seated in the hallway of our car, and felt himself secure, he revived and got talkative. Ho told us that Ills father was a brick-oven maker, and that he is helping him by carrying and mixing the clay. He was sure that if ho could only find his father they could earn their living. , I gave him a bar of chocolate from my scant supply, and ho looked at it curiously and asked what it was. One of the Russians told him that it was chocolate, but he did not know what chocolate was—he had never seen any. So they told him jt was something sweet, and he tucked it away smilingly. saying: “I am going to keep it for my‘ tea.” I thought this a remarkable teat of self-control for a- hungry child. _ I spent two days in Samara, which is under martial law, a necessary measure to prevent looting by bands of desperate men coming from the nearby villages. Hunger drives them to lawlessness; only the severest measures can prevent, under these conditions, a state of absolute anarchy. In spite of all the existing misery, law and order prevails in Samara, the Government keeping it up with a- strong arm and a resolution which gives one confidence to do relief work, which otherwise would be impossible. The A.R.A (American Relief Association) is doing laudable relief work among the starving children and hospital inmates of Samara, which is supplemented by the work of the Government organisations, which strive with Titanic efforts to cope with the worst famine Russia, and perhaps the whole world, has ever seen. Yet all these, efforts are by far insufficient to cover even a small part of (ho horrible need. After two days in Samara I decided to proceed south-eastwards by horse and sleigh, thus getting a chance to sec the villages away from the railroad lines, where I was told conditions are_ oven worse than in the towns, since their people still,manage to get a little by trading their belongings for food brought, along by passengers from the Turkestan district. (To bo continued. 1