TERRIBLE SOCIAL CONDITIONS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXVII, Issue LXXVII, 5 August 1918, Page 5

TERRIBLE SOCIAL CONDITIONS.

MILAN, Aug. 2. A terrifying picture of social conditions in Russia is supplied by a wellknown Pole, who returned from Petrograd, where the people wait in queues, sometimes for sixteen hours, to secure horrible black bread mixed largely with straw, hay and sawdust. Meat costs twenty roubles a pound. Crowds search rubbish heaps for food. Deaths occur frequently in the streets from starvation, while the cholera mortality is high owing to the absence of medicines and the frightful general conditions. Starved horses employed in carrying corpses are constantly falling in the streets, leaving their ghastly burdens long unburied. Between Petrograd and the Finnish border the people lack even bread. The Bolsheviks' excesses* are provoking increased popular hostility. The latest local Soviet elections reveal a great change in sentiment. Wherever a Bolshevik candidate was rejected Lenin annulled the election. The Bolshevik leaders no longer dare organise demonstrations on their own. account, while precautions to secure their personal safety exceed anything in the history of the Tsars. — Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. * COPENHAGEN, Aug. 2. The Russian Government has ordered the arrest of Maxim Gorky and suppressed his newspaper. —Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.