PERIL TO WEST.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 November 1921, Page 5

PERIL TO WEST.

FAMINE IN RUSSIA. NO HOPE OF RESCUE, POWERS SHOULD ACT ? By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Nov. 20. Sir Philip Gibbs is publishing a series of articles in the Daily Chroncle on the famine in Russia. The first was written on a Volga steamboat going to Kazan. He says: ‘•Winter has come and buried the last hopes of many millions of people. I cannot see a hope of rescue left for many of them, though some of the starving are still hanging on to the odd chance that some miracle may help them, such as food from the Soviet or charity from a foreign country. Charity can hardly touch the outer edge of this vast-spreading region, where hunger and disease are in absolute possession. The people are killing their last cattle, because they have no fodder. DESPERATE ACTS OF STARVING. “Many inhabitants of the Volga region, are living on chopped weeds, which are causing death. They are also swallowing British chalk to fill their stomachs, though it hurts them horribly. I should not have believed these things if I had not seen them. Peasant fathers and mothers watch their children groaning in their agony and sit quickly waiting for almost inevitable death. Mine rs one of the last boats going down the Volga. Soon this highway of rescue for the famine-stricken will 'be closed, and all transport will be by sleigh. “Thp American relief administration is seeking 3700 horses for this work, but it will be hard to find them. Americans are providing 150.000 meals daily for the children in Kazan, but there are 1,500,000 in the province. The continuance of relief will be a wild adventure, as there are no roads. Some of the journeys are 200 miles over snowfields with chances of meeting wolves.

MENACE TO THE WORLD. “Snow has dammed the slowly creeping tide of people fleeing from the hun-ger-huanted. typhus-stricken villages. On the journey here I camo across a trainload of people packed in close trucks, where they had been for weeks. I saw them huddled together hunting vermin from their 'bodies. Also in Moscow I saw a crowd of refugees asleep. As I stepped among them I held my breath, because of the stench from the crowd of mud-colored, rag-swathed sleepers.’’ Sir Philip Gibbs concludes: “Now snow has stopped the movement of refugees. If Moscow is all they have seen careless observers saw no famine; but directly one comes to Samara, Simbirsk or Kazan he finds scores of thousands of deserted children, many wearing only a ragged shirt, and looking like monkeys, with grey, wizened faces, watchful eyes and claw-like hands. They are now being fed once a day by British and American relief. I write hoping to touch the heart of the world, and rouse it from its damnable and deadly indifference to the fate of millions. Unless the powers act quickly, leaving politics aside, hundreds of thousands must perish. Western Europe will then be punished by a pestilence, and will deserve it.”—Aus.N.Z. Cable Assn.