RUSSIAN FAMINE.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 1979, 22 November 1921, Page 5

RUSSIAN FAMINE.

EXPERIENCE OP WINTER. HOPES OF MILLIONS. WAITING FOR A MIRACLE. [By Electric Cable—Copyright.] [Aust. and N.Z. Cable Association.] LONDON, November 20. The "Daily Chronicle" is publishing a series of articles by Sir Phillip Gibbs on the famine in Russia. The first was written on a Volga steamboat, going to Kazan. The writer says —"Winter has come and buried the last hopes o? many millions of people. I cannot see hopo of rescue left for them. Though some are starving to death, still they are hanging on on the odd chance that some miracle may help them, such as food from the Soviet or charity from' a foreign country. The miracle is unlikely to happen, and charity can hardly! touch the outer edge of this vast spreading region where hunger and disease are in absolute possession. The people are killing the last of the cattle because there is no fodder. "Many of the inhabitants of the Volga region are living on chopped leaves and weeds, which are causing their death, and also swallowing British chalk to fill their stomachs, though it hurts them horribly. I should not have believed these things if I Fad not seen them. Peasant fathers and mothers watch their children groaning in their agony, and sit quietly waiting for the almost inevitable death. Mine is one of the last boats going to Volga. Soon this highway of rescue for the famine-sticken will be closed, and all transport will be by sleig-h. The American relief administration is seeking 3,700 horses for this work, but it will be hard to find them. "The Americans are providing 150,000 meals daily for children in Kazan, but there are 1,500,000 in the province. The continuance of relief will bo a wild adventure, as there are no roads, and some of the journeys are 200 miles over snowflields, with the chances of wolves. The snow has dammed the slowly creeping tide of people fleeting from the hungerhaunted and typhus-stricken villages. On the journey here I came across a train-load of people packed In closed trucks, where they had been for weeks. I saw them huddlecl together, hunting vermin from their bodies. Also, at Moscow, I saw a crowd of refugees asleep. As I stepped among them I held my breath because of the stench of the crowd of mud-coloured, rag-swathed sleepers.