EPISTLES TO THE EDITOR

NZ Truth, Issue 854, 1 April 1922, Page 3

EPISTLES TO THE EDITOR

RUSSIA'S STARVING MILLIONS,

Dear "Truth," — Many weeks ago I at- '■ tended a Labor Party meeting m the Paramount Theatre, at which an announcement was made by a speaker that a. committee had been formed m Wellington for the purpose of raising funds for the relief of the starving rnilMons of Russia. What has become of that committee? If the committee was really formed, why has it not been functioning? Times are bad m this country, no doubt, but our habitat is stiil a paradise compared to the Brainless regions of the Volga. Can we not even forward the price of a sacrificed meal? Men, women, and little children are starving m their millions; dying by the roadside m swarms; pain-racked; the prey m their weakness of every lurking and marauding disease germ. Fourteen months on end of drought, the tiny, Mfesustaining grain seeds rotting within the dry soil! This on top of the horrors of war, revolution, and, consequently, already emptied granaries. One would have thought that every man m this country professing ideals, every man able to give public utterance to his thoughts, and, more especially, every man who has j dared to proclaim himself from the plati form and by medium of the Press, an I exponent of an idealogy based upon hu- ■ manitarianism, would have plunged heart and soul into endeavoring to' rouse the people of this country to a realisation of the awful, frightful, unimaginable horrors now afflicting the regions of the Volga. i™ th ?* is * n that is required—realisa♦l -Si * d 0 not ' we average people, / think and realise. We lack the faculty of l^fLi 1110 * 1 - If men and women can be made to see— see the dying mother with the protruding bones of famine; see the i 1 " 1 * children, the tins', fleshless limbs, the blackened features and swollen abdomens of the starved children, babies like our own bright, loved and cared -for little ones, dying m the agonies of starva- ' ll? n - Mothers and fathers will give, do they but see. And, if a committee were formed, was it not with this object m view.' . But what public manifestation of activity m this direction emanating from this committee have we seen? Personl', r , have seen none whatever. A doll raffle (pitiable effort), m the name of the mayor, who was not mentioned at the Labor Party meeting, if I remember connr n s ir,L S a me 'nber of the committee at »!' } Vha t excuse have its personnel to offer m place of activity? Beside the colossal magnitude of Russia's woes no excuse whatever can be worth a tinker's dam. No consideration of politics (not even the all-important one of votecatching) could be worthily adduced as even a suspicion of reason for non-activ- \% »y those who shouldered the responsibility when the delegated representative first arrived here from Pvussia. Surely, our public men are not all so dead to a sense of their duty to humanity? Are there not a few, a meagre few, m this city of Wellington, who will come forward even 3'et and make organised public effort for Russia's aid?— Sir, we who are without influence and without ability, await a lead. Can you, who are so influential, not give it us? — I am, etc., " ANTI-BOLSHEVIST."