HAPLESS HORDE

Northern Advocate, 21 January 1935, Page 7

HAPLESS HORDE

WHITE RUSSIAN POPULACE MANCHUKUO HORRORS. PERNICIOUS MODES OF LIFE. [United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph. — Copyright.! (Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, January 20. “The condition of 30,000 White Russians in Manchukuo is worse than anything I could have imagined. Two thirds of them are living on the verge of starvation.” This view was expressed by Dame Rachel Cowdry, a prominent social worker and chief of the social question and opium traffic section of the League of Nations, who has returned from a two months’ tour.

She told the “News Chronicle” that most officials and business men sent away their wives after the murder of Mrs Woodruff. Consequently, girls were unable to find domestic positions. Younger ones, aged 11 and 12, haunt low dance halls, and the elders become the mistresses of Chinese farmers.

Hundreds of Russians, many of them of noble birth, are living in huts and dugouts built of mud and petrol tins. Some have been from 16 to 17 years in such quarters. Women are committing suicide owing to their helplessness. Seven or eight are frozen to death nightly in the streets of Harbin.

There are drug shops everywhere. Mobs of lads beg for money to spend on “dope.” There is a notorious shelter called “Small Boys’ Corner,” where scores are doped with heroin cigarettes. Their faces look like death as. they lean against the walls in 50 to 60 degrees of frost. •Dame Cowdry is making efforts to raise money in America and elsewhere to succour the sufferers. She says that Japanese are tackling the problem, but outside help is essential.