RUSSIAN FAMINE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 12 August 1921, Page 5

RUSSIAN FAMINE.

FOOD FOR DRONES! A POIGNANT LETTER. (Per Press Association—Copyright). LONDON, August 10. The “Daily Telegraph” published a poignant letter from a Russian correspondent at .Moscow, stating: “What a pity you could not have seen M. Kamenoff, nervous, pale, haltingly admitting to a meeting of people whom the Bolsheviks tried for three years to destroy, that the, Soviet was impotent to deal with famine. Remember, the Government did not call the meeting. The slaves of yesterday met and demanded it, and such was the Bolsheviks’ panic that they had to comply, hence the creation of the non-political committee which sent out the international appeal. Although now forced to accept assistance from those whose destruction they sought hitherto, the Bolsheviks have not changed their essentially malignant nature.” “Neither,” he continues, “has the Soviet power to change the machinery of their monstrous administration. If food is handed over to the Soviet, it 1 means that the Reds and drone officials will get everything, the poor people nothing. Whatever is done by outside organisations they must control the distribution. The Soviet will oppose this bitterly, but it must not be otherwise. I jbhink the famine has give>» the Bolsheviks the knock-out. At M. Lenin’s tea table they are discussing ways and means of escaping, comparing notes on foreign places for an asylum. England is much favoured. M. Lenin is a wily bird and will take good care we do not hang him. The real culprits are sure to leave betimes. We, their unwilling slaves, may yet be destroyed by the people’s first furious onslaught. The fear of famine has gone too far. Great territories have become empty, over-run by weeds. God’s will be done. Forgive njy incoherencies, but I am always hungry and depressed, and do not believe there is a Government in Russia. The Soviettyrants simply control the big cities, several railroads and little food. The rest is all chaos. In Petrograd special trains are removing 70,000 children from the famine areas.”

INTERNATIONAL RELIEF. WASHINGTON, August 10. Mr Hoover, in acov»ting the invitation from the- Swiss President to send a representative to .the Internationa! Conference of Relief Societies regarding the aid for Russia, pointed out that the faming in Russia, is beyond the resources of all available private charities in the wc-rld, especially in these times of economic hardship. “Relief,” Mr Hoover- -‘even wore the funds available for food, involves the rehabilitation of transportation, agriculture, arid industry, necessitating measures which again are beyond the reach of charity.” Mi’ Hoover states that each national Relief vSociety should proceed independently. The American relief measures in Russia are proceeding. Preliminary steps are -oeing taken, and he believes the actual relief work will soon begin. The American prisoners in Russia a:e beginning to return to Riga. The Daily Telegraph’s Berlin correspondent says ther is a more hopeful note in the Russian situation Rains during July have improved the outlook in the Samara government, resulting in a marked fall in the price of flour. In parts of the Kursk government the scorched fields have been sown afresh with good results. The despatch of grain from districts with good harvests has already begun on private initiative. There are excellent harvests in the government, due to the rainfall.