RUSSIA’S TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 July 1921, Page 5

RUSSIA’S TRAGEDY.

FAMINE INCREASING, GENERAL MIGRATION. FIGHTING FOR FOOD. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received July 24, 5.5 p.m. London, July 23. The Riga correspondent of the Daily Express states that the famine is increasing. Thirty million people in one zone, after eating cats, dogs and rats, are now fleeing from their homes in a desperate search for food. There is general migration in three directions, one to Siberia, another to the Caucasus, and the third and largest towards Moscow. Stores of cattle and grain are being raided en route and hordes of hungerstricken people are storming passing trains, completely dis organ is ing traffic. The Bolshevik authorities, growing hysterica), called out regiments to protect the cities agaiinst mobs of hungry country folk and fighting commenced between troops and maddened mobs. Elsewhere country folk refused to give up their surplus food, which the troops divided. Foraging parties endeavored forcibly to seize produce for the cit'ies, where there is chronic starvation; The situation at Gebtcng is beyond Soviet control.

Lenin has issued a proclamation to all Russia urging an increase of production, otherwise a complete exhaustion wijj, result. The Government is seeking to cancel all foreign orders for coal, naphtha and other products, and divert all available funds to food. Trotsky threatens that if the aimy is deprived of food he will join the exodus and become an advance guard of an invasion on Western Europe.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Aesn.