INTERNAL RUSSIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 February 1922, Page 3

INTERNAL RUSSIA.

DR NANSEN’S APPEAL. AUSTRALIAN ANI) N. 7.. CABLE ASSOCIATION. LONDON, Feb. 17. Dr Nansen, lecturing in the Central Hall at Westminster, said that this would be his last desperate appeal to the British Government. How could other nations, lie asked, stand callously aside and allow 2(1,000,600 Russians to die of starvation? The audience shuddered when Dr Nansen declared that lie had the names

of scores of Russian fathers and mothers who had killed their children, not in order to end the children’s sufferings, but in order that the parents might oat and live.

They must be prepared, lie said, to hear of cannibalism spreading within an area of 1.100 by 600 miles around the Volga. Nineteen out of thirty million people were in danger of starvation. Ten millions, said Dr Nansen, would inevitably die, whatever was now done.

RUSSIAN ARMY

HELINGSFORS, Feb. 16

At a meeting of the Central Soviet in Moscow, it- was proposed to reduce the Soviet Army by 50 per cent, in order to reduce the difficulty of provisioning them, and in deference to the wishes of tlie American Famine Delegation. In consequence of a violent protest from Trotsky, Lenin’s proposal was rejected, Trotsky saying that demobilisation was impossible in view of the general situation in Europe. A famine revolt lias broken out in tlie province of Tcberson. Large armed forces are advancing on the town of Tcberson, which the starving people threaten to sack.

FRANCE AND RUSSIA. LONDON, February 17

The “Morning Post’s” Paris correspondent says: —Secret pourparlers nre proceeding between the French Government and M. Krassin relating to the guarantees that France intends to demand, before she is willing to confer with Soviet delegates at Genoa. It is understood the Soviet have offered an important provisional undertaking to place Odessa, Sebastopol, Petrograd, and Novorissisk under a special regime as free ports, enabling foreigners to secure bases and assemble material, preparatory to reorganising transport.

The French interpret the German annoyance over a possible Franco-Russian rapprochement, as indicating that Germany, feeling confident of British support had hoped to find France isolated, at Genoa, and now realises that this is unlikely.