RUSSIAN FAMINE

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 19

RUSSIAN FAMINE

HORRORS OF THE FAMINE. LONDON, September 12. i Tlie special correspondent of The Times, describing the horrors of the Rusian famine, declares that in extent and severity they far exceed anything hitherto experienced in Europe. The little flour obtainable is eked out with bark, leaves, clay-, and insects, which are crushed into a paste. Anything capable of mixing with flour is used. When the last morsel of flour is gone, and everything has been sold at any price, the people migrate, imagining that many may reach tile fertile soil of Siberia or even India. Dumb despair is written on every face in the famine towns, where one sees the corpses Oi men and women who have died of starvation and disease. Crowds of emaciated starving people and innumerable children, are herded together, jjtheir only shelter being strips, of rags stretched on poles. -Iney, too, are exhausted and listless, and the means of transporting these miserable beings are pitifully inadequate. APPEALS TO MOSCOW IGNORED. LONDON, September 13. According to a Riga message, 11 steamers, with coin cargoes for Russian famine districts, have arrived, but Russia i has provided only 200 trucks. Urgent requests to Moscow for additional means of transport remain unanswered. INrERNATIONAL COMMISSION'S WORK. PARIS, September 15. Despite the Russian Government's insolent refusal to permit, a delegation representing the International Commission to visit Russia and investigate the extent of tlie famine, the commission has defined to endeavour to organise relief ; therefore it is inviting 24 countries, including Germany, to confer at Brussels on October 6 to consider 1 ways and means. Wil ODES ALE EX ECUTIOXS. LONDON, September 16. The Daily Telegraph's correspondent at Riga states that 830 people in Kieff, who were accused of complicity in a plot to overthrow the Soviet Government, were shot by order of the Extraordinary Commission.