ALMOST STARVING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 18, 22 January 1935, Page 7

ALMOST STARVING

PLIGHT OF WHITE RUSSIANS SUFFERINGS IN MANCHUKUO. NOBLES IN HUTS AND DI'GOI TS. ! IBy Telegraph—-Press Association—Copyright] LONDON, Jan. 19. “The condition oi 39,990 White Russians in Manchukuo is worse than anything I could have imagined. Two thirds are living on the verge of starvation, ’’ said Lame Rachael Crowdy in an interview with the Chronicle on her return from a two months’ tour. “Most of the officials and business men sent away their wives after the murder of Mrs. Woodruff, and consequently the girls are unable to find domestic position. The younger ones, aged 11 and 12, haunt the low dance halls, and the elder ones become Chinese farmers’ mistresses. Hundreds of Russians, many of noble birth, are living in huts and dugouts built of mud and petrol tins. Some have been for 16 or 17 years in such quarters. People are committing suicide owing to their helplessness. Seven or eight are frozen to death each night in the streets of Harbin.

“There are drug shops everywhere and mobs of lads beg money to spend on dope. There is a notorious shelter called the small boys’ corner, where scores, doped with heroin cigarettes, have faces like deathsheads, leaning against the wall in 50 to 60 degrees of frost.

Dame Crowdy, who is making an effort to raise funds in America and elsewhere to succour the sufferers, says that the Japanese a*e tackling the problem, but outside help is essential.

Dame Crowdy, who was educated at Hyde Park New College, Guy’s Hospital, and Apothecary’s Hall, was lecturer and demonstrator for the National Health Society from 1912 to 1914. She was principal commandant of the V.A.D.’s in France and Belgium during the war, and received a number of honours, including Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1919. She was made an hon. Doctor of Laws of Smith College. United States, in 1926, and was chief of the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section of the League of Nations from 1919 to 1931.