RUSSIAN SITUATION.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 22, 19 March 1918, Page 5

RUSSIAN SITUATION.

PANIC-STRICKEN POPULATION. FAMINE THREATENED IN PETROGRAD. PETROGRAD, March 17. The evacuation has become a panic. There is tremendous railway congestion, and thousands are leaving on foot. Many Britishers are stranded. Thp city has degenerated to tho aspect of a provincial borough. There arc no vehicles, and the lighting and free transit services are reduced to the minimum. Trotzky, as food dictator, is constantly occupied listening to frantic appeals by provincial deputations. They declare that the peasants have now consumed the grain seed, and are faced with absolute famine. Potrograd’s food difficulty is acute. All the provision shops are closed, and the uncleaned streets are heaping up with vast masses of snow. 9 From horses which died of starvation the buttocks have been slashed off by the Tartars, who eat the meat minced and raw. The consumption of horse meat is general despite the appearance of glanders. Tho result of the Bolsheviki legislation is apparent in the provinces, where the peasants, are administering ferocious lynch law. A. whole village in the Kazan district turned out to see four peasants burned to death for a crime not stated. Four youths at Barnopol, in Siberia, were condemned for stealing. Three wore publicly beheaded and the fourth barbarously mutilated to death. At Zmievo merchants were ordered to pay 100,000 roubles each, and these failing to do so were thrown into the river like dogs, with stones attached to their necks.