MISERY OF RUSSIANS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16218, 24 August 1918, Page 4

MISERY OF RUSSIANS.

HUNGER AND CHOLERA. BOLSHEVIK EXCESSES. LONDON, August 2. The Milan correspondent of the Times says that a terrifying picture of tho social conditions in Russia have been supplied bj* a well-known Pole who has returned from Petrograd and Moscow. Ho says that the triple miseries of hunger, cholera and Bolshevism dominate Petrograd. \ Tho people wait in queues, sometimes for 16 hours, to secure horrible black bread, which is mixed largely with straw, hay. and I sawdust. Labourers receive daily about 7oz, and dorks and other employees 3ioz, while doctors, lawyers, and journalists get LJoz. and tho upper classes 11 to 17 drams. Meat costs about £2 2s 3rl a pound. Crows search for food in the rubbish heaps. Swarms of women cling to tho incoming trains weeping and begging, and there are frequent deaths in the streets resulting from hunger. Trotsky asserts that famine cannot ho said to exist, as “Wo have not yet seen queues before the undertakers’ shops.” The high mortality from cholera is duo to the absence of medicines.