TRAGEDY OF EUROPE.

Otaki Mail, Volume XXIII, 3 December 1920, Page 4

TRAGEDY OF EUROPE.

I?HE SADDEST SIGHT IN HISTORY j . A tragedy is being enacted over im- I nensc areas of Central Europe, Q.t a j ..ind about which men of British birth aeroifully know nothing. Search our J iiospitnlk through and through, and j you will scarcely find traces of a j honor which has become the daily lot i,p so many of our fellow-inert. Britishers are. on the whole, a humane people. They are out to prevent ei-uolty to children; even to dumb animals. They rather pride themselves, too, ou their line sporting -pirit: and if the facts are as stated, , o anything like them, they are the : ,, t nation on earth to stand quietly j and acknowledge themselves .eaten by circumstances which lie j v-ithiu the power of man to control. The following statements are taken Dorn the latest reports of the League of lied Cross Societies, of Government officials, and of American experts: — “Whole starvation is threatened iu Poland. . ■” “Xo words can describe the appalling misery of the famished population of Vienna (Austria). Death stalks through the streets of Vienna in broad midday, and takes unhindered toll. An examination of 187,000 school children • a December. 1919, showed that 20,000 were well nourished, 70,000 were i under-nourished, and 97,000 wore under-nourished and sick. The general death rate has risen 46 per cent since rug. The mortality from tuberculosis ]: s risen 250 per cent in the same priiod. Many children oi' one year have not surpassed their weight at I birih.” Budapest (Hungary) “is otic vast city of misery and suffering. In 1913 there were 23.000 births and 17,300 deaths: iii 1918 there were 14,700 ! births and 29,900 deaths —the number deaths double that of births.” j At \Tove ( Czecbo-Slo vakia): “Iu ] cotfage a sick man and his four i children were crouching round the Move stark naked. The mother was

out trying lo get food, and failed. This is < illy a sample of many other families, who are so weakened by starvation that they must sit at home and die unless food is sent, soon.” Armenia: “It is estimated that ilieie is Iho equivalent of half a million people at. present needing complete support if these people ar not to perish from the earth.” Poland: “From the present indications, the population, is threatened with one of the worst typhus fever epidemics in the history of'the world, which, unless checked, will prove a danger that will threaten the whole of Europe. There are now approximately 230.01)0 eases of typhus. In some districts there is but one doctor to each 130.000 people.” The Ukraine: “In village of 2000 nr 5000 people, half of the people would be ill at the same time, and ten nr twenty would die each day front the disease. There were physicians who had to attend to a territory ,40 miles it) diameter. Doctors who had to treat disease iu areas m which there were 20.i"tit or 30.000 typhus patients could get no metb-al supplies, anti had to stvc oniv moral encouragement to their it-);. * ’ Ihe promoters of the Wellington Fund ask: “In face of the ghastly tragedy in Europe, where millions of children are actually starving, who '■:m find it in his or her heart to Tctuse the assistance so piteously sought?”