THOUSANDS OF CHILD BEGGARS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16805, 11 August 1925, Page 8

THOUSANDS OF CHILD BEGGARS.

RUSSIA’S GREATEST PROBLEM. MOSCOW, July 11— One of the Soviet Russia’s greatest unsolved problems is to relieve the thousands of vagrants, destitute children, beggars and unemployed Which overflow every city. The greatest of these evils is Huappalling number of vagrant and desti Lite children, Which Commissioner of Education Lunacharsky, characterises as “the most- terrible ulcer on the Soviet Union’s body.” Many of these juveniles are addicted to drugs. Others are ir. fected with disease. All are a positive menace. “Hundreds of thousands of these children,” said! Lunacharsky in a recent appeal on behalf of them, “have, degenerated into a state of semisavagery, bordering on idiooy, whilo other have had their wits so sharpened and excited by collision with life that they (have become dangerous enemies of society.” Of almost equal proportions are the legions of adult pajipers and mendicants that the visitor finds cluttering every street and squatting iri front of every church. The constant cry is, “Khleh, pnshnlista! Klileb, pnshalista !” (“Bread, please ! bread, please !”) In all other outward aspects, the occasional traveller who finds his way to Russia these days is agreeably surprised to find Moscow quite a normal city, although tho most expensive in the world. This army of sorrowful, pauperised Russians that assail one at every turn, is tho mostevident public spectacle in the Bolshevik capital. That the problem of child vagrancy is beyond the control of the State is admitted even by Lunacharsky. In hie appeal to the public for private funds he says: “The State alone can not eradicate this evil. Therefore, every* person with a responsive heart must assist by sending subscriptions, otherwise all efforts will be useless, and the great stream of vagrant children will not only pay a -horrible tribute of death, but Will develop into apolluting flood, poisoning the entire current of life.”