INTERNAL RUSSIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 November 1921, Page 3

INTERNAL RUSSIA.

US'I KALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION STARVING RUSSIA. (Received This Day at. IRO p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 20.

Sir Phillip Gibbs in a senes ol articles in the “Daily Chronicle” on the famine in Russia, tho first written on a Volga steamboat going to Kazan says: “Winter has come and buried the last holies of maiiv millions of people. 1 cannot SCO a hope (if rescue left for many of ilium, though some of the starving ate stil! hnnjrinjj; on to the odd chance that some iniracTe may help them, such as food from Soviet or charity from a foreign country. A miracle is unlikely and charity can hardly touch the outer edge of tilis vast spreading region, where hunger and disease is in absolute possession. The people are killing their last, rattle because there is no foildor LONDON. No vo in bn- 20. Many inhabitants of Volga region are living on chopped leaves and weeds which are causing death. Tlil'y also swallowing Rritish chalk to fill theii stoniaehs though it hurts them horrible. | should not have believed these things if I had not. seen them. Peasant fathers and mothers watch their children groaning in their agony, and sit quietly waiting for the almost inevitable death. Mine is one of tile last boats going do" n the \olga. Soon this high" uy of reside for tin- famine stricken h ill he dosed and all 11 anspurt " ill 1,0 by sleigh. The American relief admin ist rat ion is seeking J,- bandied horses for this work, hut it will he hard to find them. Americans . are providing lot) thousand meals daily for children in Kazan, hut there are one and a. half million in the province. A continuance of relief will he a wild advent,lire. as there are no roads. Some journeys are two hundred miles over snow fields'with the ( bailees of meeting wolves. The snow has damned the slowly creeping tide of people (leoing lrom the hunger and typhus stricken villages. On the journey here I came across a trainload of people packed in closed trucks when> they had been for weeks. I saw them huddled together hunting vermin front their bodies. Also in Moscow T saw a crowd of refugees asleep and as 1 stepped among them I held my breath because of the stench from the crowd of mud colored, rag swathed sleepo rs.