RUSSIAN REFUGEES.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 151034, 28 July 1919, Page 3

RUSSIAN REFUGEES.

PENNILESS MILLIONAIRES. - SCENES IN CONSTANTINOPLE. According to official figures, 16,000 Greek refugees have up to the present time passed through Constantinople from Odessa and the Crimea to bo repatriated and almost as large a .number of Russian refugees has arrived, . writes a Constantiuople correspondent. The Easter midnight service at the Russian Embassy revealed the strange medley of classes, which, by the evacuation of Odessa, lias been suddenly thrown into Constantinople. All classes of refugees—princes, generals, court ladies, millionaires, and officers of all ranks — who had been driven out of their couzi- - try by the most un-Christian hordes the world has ever known, were gathei'ed there for the Easter festival. It may safely be said that all that remains of the flower of Russian aristocracy is to-day in Constantinople. I have seen ex-Ambassadors gratefully thanking British officers for such little aid as they could give. - M. Maroski, once, it is said, the richest man in Russia, arrived here with only £10 in his pocket. of the General Staff, who had been sweeping the streets of Potrograd, as their hands showed only too plainly, were thankful to have escaped with their lives. Eleven ladies, the wives of officers of the Guards, arrived here in' one boat expecting their husbands to follow them in another. Their husbands \yere sent to Novorossisk to join Deniken's Army, and the lad ips are here stranded without" clothes or mo'n I. Ono inrm f>*om Odessa vho owned- factories worth tea , million

roubles has lost his all, and he has had uo news of his wife and six children, who left before him by a ship bound for another port. There seem,.to he more^ Russians in Constantinople than any other nationality. The Allies have been feeding those on. board ship, but thousands who have lieen allowed to land are living in the town. The hotels are making disgraceful', profits. In some of the smaller hotels wooden partitions have been run up across the larger rooms, and each section is being let for fivo or six pounds a night. Fabulous prices are being charged everywhere for boots. There seems to be no -limit to the cupidity of the Greek and Armenian merchants, who, forgetful of their own troubles in the past, see'a; way, of recuperating their lost fortunes. The Turks watch it all with a cynical eye, by no means displeased that that class of.Russian which once cast n covetous eye on Constantinople has been obliged to take refuge here from thfe Bolshevist terror.