GRIM RUSSIA.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 17 October 1922, Page 8

GRIM RUSSIA.

! 1 i THE HORRORS OF DEATH. REVOLTING CANNIBALI&Ig. Ghastly in detail, but convincing in its direct simplicity, is the account written by Eleanor Franklin Egan, cf a recent journey she made through.,the famine area of Russia. Her story, the interest of which is augmented by many photographic illustrations, appears in the Saturday Evening Post, of New York. The authoress, in opening her article, says: "We were on an inspection trip down into the Volga Valley and beyond. There were Colonel Lonergan, United States Army, assistant director of American Relief in Russia, Dr. Henry Beeuwkes, director of medical relief, and myself. We were travelling in a one-time international sleeping car of the more or less European variety." As indicating the prevalence of death, Mrs. Egan refers to one particular instance where she saw the dead body of a woman lying in a gateway. She describes the episode as follows" — "Why don't they. pick up that body?" I exclaimed. "It's an awful thing to have a woman die like that and no more attention paid to her than ' if she were an alley cat!' "Yes, isn't it?" said my weary English friend very wearily. "But it's too early in the morning to begin to pick up the dead. They are lying all round everywhere. Shel's only one of many." "Do you mean to tell me that the situation-in this section is as bad as all that?" "It is just so bad that there is no way to tell.you about it. I fail to see what's'going to <come of it. We are . feeding' as we can, but cur means are limited to what we can get by appealing to -our people." THE PLIGHT pF THE BOORJOOIES. ' She grew suddenly silent and deeply thoughtful. We walked on a few paces, ! then she said: "But, do you know, I'm not nearly so much moved by the dead and dying as I probably ought to be. It is a terrible situation and a certain number must die> That sounds hardhearted, but, as you k.now in your own experience, it is absolutely necessary* 3to be hard-hearted and selective in this kind of work." "The thing my intelligence resents more than anything else in the whole wretched mess," she continued, "is the situation of my own kind of people; the good, ordinary, everyday citizens of the country—the boorjooies as they call them—reduced to idleness and beggary and just scratching around trying to find a little food!" In their investigations the travellers came to Orenburg, a city that may be described as the farthest great outpost of European Russia, lying on th© border between Europe and Asia. Alluding to her experience in this town, Mrs. Egan writes: — "Ordinarily a traveller to such an outpost of western civilisation would be interested in its history and development. He' would be exploring its churches and its mosques, its schools and museums; he would be investigating its industries and resources and discussing with himself its ethnological peculiarities. But that would be in normal times under normal conditions. The city has about 120,000 inhabitants, and I was chiefly interested in the facts that these inhabitants were dying of starvation at the rate of approximately ; 600 a day, and that cannibalism had become so common among them that butchers had actually begun to profiteer in human flesh, with the result that the Soviet authorities had had to issue an order forbidding the sale in the public markets of anything in the way of cutlets or chopped meat. "Orenburg came nearer to being hell on earth than anything I had °ever seen, either in actual fact or in nightbrought upon me through intimate association with too much horror. In 48 hours in that awful city I saw more dead bodies than 1 had" seen' before in the entire course of my life, and I saw the Chinese famine, as a result of which people died in sufficient numbers. I saw dogs eating human corpses by the roadside while thron^c of people passed by with utter indifference. And it was not so much tho rate of the dead that troubled me either; it was the apathy of /the. living J saw starving men catch and brucalh slaughter pariah dogs for the purpose of eating them, holding them ay th€ 'unci legs and . beating their heads against the ice banks with Avhich the streets were lined. I saw worse thin*" than these." - /" THE DYING AND THE DEAD. i '_ Naturally, the authoress has a good deal to say in regard to Soviet rule. Here is an extract upon that subject • .Inside Russia one leads a whispering me." lo breathe-above a whisper any disagreement with the principles of the forces in control is to run a definite -risk, and the forces in control nave their observers planted at every turn any outsider is likely to make For sheer haunting horror, the description given-pf the visit to a priemi ' as£elter for dying people, stands alone. The writer says: I went with Dr. Beeuwkes to the priemnik, and T went in my customary capacity as* a casual observer and with my usual feeling of complete detachment., * This priemnik. was only one of many, but I should like to believe it was the worst,-of. them all. The way iri- was thr-? l!f n -aj&g gateway in a high wall and thence .across a wide court to what once upon a time must have' been a very proud entrance. Crowded round this doorway were many people standing m grim silence waiting for something. • ; ° /With polite gestures the doctor got them to make way for' us, and we passed into a wide dim-lit hall. The walls of it were reeking and its floor was an mch deep in half-frozen slippery mud. I became almost instantly nauseated, but I set my teeth, wrapped my scarf round my face in such a way that I could breathe through it, and went ahead. We climbed f one-tune handsome stairway, went through another long dark hall, and came to a room. In size it was about twenty feet by forty. It might sometimes have been somebody's very fine library or living room. It had long windows done in leaded panes of coloured glass in intricate designs. None of them was open The room was totally bare; not a stick of furniture of any kind; bare floor; bare walls; but lying about on the floor m heaps and close-packed rows were literally hundreds of human beings looking like so many piles of unspeakable rags. * l fliS he r, Were Wal,owing in their own Mtn like so many maggots. I cou 3d think of nothmg else with which to compare them. They were all in the last stages of starvation, and many of them, were stricken with disease. They were groaning, crying, whimpering moaning, cobbing, retching in death agony and breathing the cold poison ot an atmosphere that sent me staggering out into the hallway to lean for many minutes against the "wall, trembling^ all over uncontrollably and with beads of cold persniration standing on my face. We counted four dead in tnat room, then we went on to others

( After that came the morgue. Here is ! the account of that house of death: j j The bodies, about forty of tftiem at I that hour, were piled one upon another ! like co-rdwood, with the heads of one j layer in one direction and of the next" layer in the other. Can you imagine I such a sight! One got an impression of a hideous mix-up of dead feet and dead faces. Many of the bodies were sprawled out in indecent ghastly attitudes; arms and legs were flung about at all angles; heads were askew, and I caught upon some of the faces I could not help but see terrible and unforgetable expressions.