RUSSIAN OUTCASTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 November 1924, Page 7

RUSSIAN OUTCASTS.

IN A WARSAW NIGHT SHELTER. (By Stephen Graham in the London Times.) Beyond the paie Vistula and cobbled roadways crowded with the barefooted poor stand two wind-blown refuges, facing waste land and the desolation of the outskirts .of a Warsaw suburb. One of the refuges is for women only; the other for women and men, the last resort of poor Russians otherwise homeless. Here from the' doorway and in the passages and up the stairs lie Russians in their ,rags, passively curled rip and sleeping, people who once were, each and every one of them with a

strange, sad history of calamity, driven from point to point and pfilar to post downward. No one pays anything; no, on e has anything to pay. In many little rooms there are strange scenes of poverty. I felt ashamed to put my head inside and look on it, well-fed, well-clothed, staying, for my part, at a place called the Hotel de I’Europe. Theirs was a Hotel de I’Europe of a different kind. But these down-and-outs were not reproachful. On the contrary, as if starved for human interest in their affairs, they all seemed, excitedly pleased to see a stranger and talk to him. I sat for a time with an old lady who had lost her hearing through being hit on the head with a rifle, the widow of an ex-Cabinet Minister of Russia, once one of +he richest people of the Russian Empire, possessed of large estates and a great collection of antiques. She had tramped Russia for two years, and, led by two peasant women, she crossed the Polish line completely destitute, parting with her last bundle to the women who led her across. Now she lies' on a truckle-bed beside dim photographs of her ancestors stuck on the wall, and talks of errand duchesses

and princesses, and, above all, of the Empress Marie, whom, seemingly, she knew well. “We cannot get rid of her,” said the overseer. “We keep trying to get her into a convent or something of the sort, for our funds are low, and one day, no doubt, this place will close and the poor old lady Will have no place on the earth. Sixty-fivei years of age, and the awful prospect of the Warsaw streets, to walk and beg and fall down at last and die.” As a contrast to her I met a number of bright, fresh-faced youths just free from Soviet-Russia and now about to start and try their luck in Poland. One had come that day from Moscow and was full of stories about the shrine

of Lenin and all the popular sayings that had sprung up about him. But he had a Soviet passport and was look, ed on suspiciously. He was perhaps a spy Or provocateur. One room at the top of the building was occupied entirely by ex-officers, and hearing of my presence others crowded in till ive had in a stifling atmosphere a sort of general conversation on Bussia and Poland ?ild the topics of the day. One officer had been shaving the head of another and paused with the work half done. There was a Cossack colonel who assail: —“How i,s Sir George Buchanan? All', ah! I knew him well.” The Colonel’s bed-neighbour was a wild-eyed looking Captain covered with cement dust. He spoke of the Communist movement in the factories and work-gangs. “All my mates are Communists, quite friendly to me as a Bussian. They assure Hie they are ready to join in whenever the Bolshevists make war on Poland.” The man from Mosco\v seemed very receptive of this intelligence. If he were really a spy it was the sort of thing he wanted to . know. “But are they not all very pious Catholics?” I asked. “Catholicism and Communism do not go together.” The dusty Captain did not think religion counted for much. “Don’t you think the Bolshevist power is going to last? ” asked the man from Moscow. “It’s dreadful there; nothing to eat, no work, no money, but how can the army be overcome? ” “It will be overcome, it will be overcome. It will itself fall to bits,” cried the down-and-outs, puffing cigarettes which I had handed round, staring at me and preparing to ask me alj sorts of questions. But I went on to other rooms, stepping over the sleepers in the passage. The same misery, the same momentary excitement met me. “They are like scenes from Gorky’s ‘Lower Depths,’ ” I said to the overseer, “but with society people plaving the parts.”