A RUSSIAN FAMINE PICTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18545, 4 May 1922, Page 4

A RUSSIAN FAMINE PICTURE

Writing in the London Times a_ correspondent, gives the following impressions: “I remember a distraught mother screaming over the dead body of her baby and cursing a peasant family which was sitting near apd eating its last crust' of bread for hoarding food while she and her children were starving. The neighbours did pot • trouble to tell her that they too were at their last gasp, they simplv ignored her and her sorrow. . '. Along the road came a little party of unfortunates. A thin, old, bearded peasant tugging between the shafts of his cart, in which were piled three or four emaciated, pock-marked children and a few domestic chattels and bundles of rags. . Behind, an old woman and a youth were exerting their little remaining strength in the attempt to push the cart. It was clear what had happened. The horse with which the family had started out ,had died •by the way, and now .they had to take its place themselves. On their faces was only dospairv . . The road was a track across the countryside ... a sandy line across a wilderness. Whore it ran up and down it was as hard as stone, but in the hollow* dust and sand were thick. Our horse shied as we came near a carcase by the roadside, from which halt a dozen crows flew up as we passed. An old peasant took out of his pocket a peice of terrible bread about which so much had been written. It was a loathsome purplish green mess, doughy in consistency. I saw how its ingredients almost refused to blend into a single mass. These were traces of flour embedded in masses of clay and kneaded together by thin verdigrisy fibres of grass and weeds, the seeds of which had also gone to its making.” .