EPIDEMIC OF INSANITY.

Otaki Mail, Volume 27, 3 November 1919, Page 4

EPIDEMIC OF INSANITY.

SIDELIGHTS OP RUSSIA. Fear and famine have engendered a veritable, epidemic of insanity in Moscow, according to the Geneva correspondent of the “Daily Chronicle.” The writer learned from fugitives that the asylums are overcrowded, and for the last two months have been unable to accept new patients. Limutjics and maniacs of all kinds stalk, raving, through the streets. The prisons are full of madmen.

In the maternity hospitals the deathrate is incredibly high. According to the managing physician of one of these establishments 90 per cent of the mothers die after childbirth, and infant mortality is scarcely lower. Funerals, like everything else, are “nationalised,” that is to say, tho dead are carried away in carts, and dumped into a vast common grave — at the cost of tho State. No religious ceremony is permitted, and no crosses may be erected over this gruesome pit.

And yet, during the festival arranged by the Soviet Government to celebrate the, anniversary of its advent to power, Futurist artists were commissioned to paint tho entire “Theatre Square” in Moscow sky-blue, and to suspend white lanterns from the trees in imitations of clouds, in order to symbolise “Heaven upon Earth,” brought about by Bolshevik rule.