NEWS BY MAIL

Hokitika Guardian, 11 January 1930, Page 7

NEWS BY MAIL

HUNGEIDTREK IN RUSSIA

RIGA, LATVIA, Nov. 21

A British business man who arrived Gore to-day from Moscow reports that the population there is panic-stricken and the Soviet Government anxious because of the rapidly increasing migration of Russian peasants towards the cities. .

"Di Northern Russia, where the peasants are eating 'potatoes roasted in a meal made of chaff and water, they have begun a great hunger-trek towards Moscow, Petj-ograd, and other cities. There is actual danger, it is stated, of the industrial population being overwhelmed by the hordes of starving peasants .during the coining winter.

According to my British informant, the Ogpu (the secret terrorist police) is taking extreme measures to prevent the peasants from settling in Moscow and whole train loads are being deported daily. The misery of the population is indescribable. Stalin (the Chief of the Soviet Government) is, according to Communists whom my informant met in Moscow, insane, being strongly guarded by friends whom he has appointed to controlling positions in the Government departments. His condition is understood to have been further endangered by a severe attack of jaundice.

Rvkov (diairman of the People's Commissars) is leading a new opposition group.

SONS SAVE FATHER. DUNFERMLINE, Nov. 21. The heroic conduct of two sons in saving their father’s life when he was pinned under debris in a pit has just come to light. The father, John Hutton, of Steeland, near Dunfermline, was at work in the Steeland pit when the roof gave wav and lie was buried.

His sons, Ben and James, strove for three hours to move the mass which was paining their father down and gradually suffocating him. They ignored the plea of their father to save themselves, and when there was another fall Ben’s hand was shattered in trying to ward off a huge stone which was falling on his father’s head.

The father told me to-day: The hoys were- simply great. I thought I was done for and told them so, but they utterly disregarded their own danger. I knelt in the darkness for turee hours, struggling for breath and terrified T was going to be suffocated.