STARVING RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1922, Page 4

STARVING RUSSIA.

AN APPEAL FOR. RELIEF. NEW PLYMOUTH COMMITTEE. After staggering for seven years under the burden of war and civil war and revolution, a fresh and a more terrible calamity has befallen Russia. Throughout the wide region of the Volga a burning drought has destroyed the harvest for the last two seasons, and the suffering peasants, absolutely destitute as they are, are suffering terrible privations, and harrowing accounts have reached this country of the awful conditions in Russia to-day, it being estimated that 33 millions are now affected by the famine caused by the drought. With the object of providing a certain amount of relief to alleviate the suffering of these stricken people, an appeal has been launched by the Russian Famine Relief Committee, London, to New Zealand asking for a contribution towards an Imperial fund. The appeals from Russia are unparalled in their urgency. The Mayor of New Plymouth (Mr. F. E. Wilson) is in receipt of a letter from the joint committee of the Society of Friends and the Council of Christian Congregations, Auckland, asking support for the appeal and asking also that a meeting be arranged for at New 'Plymouth, at which Miss Margaret Thorp, of Australia, who spent nearly three years in Russia assisting in the administration of relief, should speak. The date allocated to New Pljonouth is Thursday, June 22. 1922, and with the object of organising a meeting and soliciting public sympathy a small committee, with the Rev. Oscar Blundell as chairman and Mr. W. H. Gilliver as secretary, has been formed in New Plymouth. An assurance is given that all money subscribed for such a deserving cause will be expended on the work for which the appeal is made.