TRAGEDY OF RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 June 1922, Page 5

TRAGEDY OF RUSSIA.

PICTURE OF MISERY. SCENE OF HOPELESS DESPAIR. DOGS AND RATS EATEN. The desperate state of affairs in fam-ine-stricken Russia was alluded to by Miss Margaret Thorp in conversation with a Daily News representative yesterday. Miss Thorp is a member of the British Society of Friends, which for the past three years has been relieving distress, caused by the famine in the Volga Valley ■in Russia. Miss Thorp pointed out that as much as the relief funds as possible were being expended on Australia and New Zealand produce in London, all cash being converted into goods and no money being transmitted to Russia. Only one*half per cent, of the goods sent to date had been lost, so that the people have the satisfaction of knowing that practically all the goods sent reach their destination. The need was still just as great as ever, said Miss Thorp, and would be until the next Russian harvest in August or September. The famine was due to seven years of war, followed by the greatest drought on record. The wheat-growing portions o-f the Volga Valley formerly supplied, not only a great part of Europe, but also 15 per cent, of Britain’s wheat requirements. The last great drought was in 1891, three provinces then being affected. At the present time twelve provinces were under the spell of the famine. The Russians had put in a good sowing of wheat, but 70 per cent, of the crops had failed utterly. When Miss Thorp went down to the famine area she found the picture was juat as terrible as it had been depicted, if not worse. The inhabitants were making a kind of bread from dried leaves, dirt and other refuse mixed with water. They were eating eats, dogs, rats and mice. There was no panic, but just a hopeless despair ana they knew that unless food came they would die. The Russians were great fatalists. Thirty-three millions were affected by the famine. It was a pitiful sight to see little children searching the rubbish heaps for something to eat. If a crust were thrown from a carriage window a crowd of starving people would rush for it.

The. Russian health authorities were doing their best to fight the diseases which are rampant, but most o-f the workers were exhausted. The famine area was divided into relief areas, and each had its specifid district, so that there was no overlapping.

MONEY WILL SAVE LIVES. Miss Thorp spoke appreciably of the response in New Zealand for the appeal for funds. Everywhere she lectured the appeal was generously met, and the people were ready to give when they knew the facts, and that the goods purchased were sure of getting to the stricken Russians. The New Zealand money was cabled to the High Commissioner in London free of charge by the New Zealand Government. The money was immediately transformed into goods, shipped to Russia and sent down to the famine area in sealed trucks, where it is administered by accredited British authorities in the Volga Valley. The quicker the money is sent, said Miss Thorp, the sooner lives will be saved, it being essential that help should arrive this month. The King was patron of the fund, and circulars had been sent out signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London, and about forty other dignitaries. Miss Thorp explained that not a penny of her expenses came from the fund, her whole* services being given in the cause of relief. Stress was laid on the fact that the relief organisations had entire control and supervision of the food supplies, and Dr. Nansen and others had stated in their reports that all that was sent reached the starving people and was efficiently administered. One precaution mentioned by Miss Thorp was that the workmen handling the supplies searched each other to ensure that no food was taken. One case of theft of goods was discovered in this manner, and a searching inquiry followed. THE PUBLIC MEETING. In her address to the people of New Plymouth last night at the Empire Theatre, Miss Thorp amplified the story given above. The Mayor presided and there was a large attendance. After explaining that her work in Europe had been under the auspices of the Society of Friends, which had so often taken up reconstruction work in war-devastated countries, and giving a few details of the assistance given to the fund in Australia, Miss Thorp took her audience with her through her work in Austria, Poland and Russia. Aided by lantern slides of scenes she had actually witnessed, the lecturer told a plain, unvarnished story of the appalling needs of the children in those sorely stricken countries. From Vienna, with its magnificent buildings, with its history of artistic and scientific achievement, and its present misery, to Warsaw, the capital of that Poland which has known more perhaps than any country in Europe what the agony of a vanquished people can be, Miss Thorp took her audience in pictures which were tragic enough.

Pictures wore shown of cliildren half their normal size. with bodies twisted and misshapen from lack of nourishment, whole families adrift by the roadside in the bitter winter weather, or huddled in .dug-outs unfit for pigs. What should have been fertile land was only a jumble of rusty barbed wire entanglements as a memento of the great war. All these were gruesome in the extreme. Poland’s problem is to absorb thousands of refugees coming back to her from Russia, penniless, homeless, and generally | bringing with them the awful typhus scourge. The work of reconstruction is painfully slow; only 67.000 habitations have so far been erected in place of the 550,000 destroyed during the Avar. Medical necessities are almost impossible to obtain, and the gross ignorance of the refugees is no small difficulty in itself.

It was the pictures of life in the Russian famine-stricken districts, however, which drove home to the audience the appalling misery that obtains in that unhappy country. So-called bread, made of earth, leaves and straw, clothing so scarce that the dead are stripped for their often disease-laden clothing to be immediately used by the living; children in a stage of emaciation unspeakably horrible, men and women dead by the roadside from sheer starVation, bmml® a starj not aeedipg words

to emphasise the bitter cry of hungry children.

“Save the Children” was the note of the whole address. “Children are neij ther Bolsheviks nor any other kind of politician.” “Children don’t know anything about the Government; they only know they are starving.” “Nor do Britishers recognise children as enemies anywhere.” The lecturer closed her address with a picture of healthy, happy children saved by the good offices of the various relief societies, and with a strong appeal for funds with which to add to their number. At the close of the address the Mayor stated that a street collection had been; approved by the Borough Council for to-day. A resolution calling upon the Government to subsidise “Save the Children" funds voluntarily given was carried unanimously.