MISERY IN RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1922, Page 6

MISERY IN RUSSIA.

TEN MILLIONS STARVING, THE CHILDREN IN PERIL* APPEAL TO TARANAKI PEOPLE. A striking letter embracing an appeal for the starving Russians has been handed to us by Miss Margaret Thorp, who this Week lectured on the subject in New Plymouth. Miss Thorp sends us the letter as “it is an appeal to the country people of Taranaki; to those whom my voice will not reach.” Miss Thorp writes:— “I want those of you who live out in the country and in farming districts to have some share in the national effort which New Zealand is making at the present time to send relief across to Russia. There are still ten millions starving, and if we can supplement what the war-exhausted countries of Europe have been giving, it will help to keep these people alive until their next harvest in August and September. “In New Zealand, although times are not too good, we know nothing of the horror and desolation that war leaves behind. In Central Europe and Russia, a generation of children is underdeveloped and stunted because of war, blockade and famine. I have been down into the heart of the famine areas in Russia, where 33 million people are affected. After seven years of war, there has come the most terrible drought on record. As I went out to the country districts it was as if a great forest firehad swept throughout the land—everything charred and burnt. Instead of cattle dying as in Australian droughts, it was human beings aS well, great cartloads of bodies being taken each day out to the cemeteries. r ‘l saw little children feverishly searching rubbish heaps for bits >of food. Little babies feebly mewing like kittens for milk that their mothers could not give them; homes where bread was being made out of leaves, bark and straw mixed with dirt and water. The smell and taste of it was filthy, but it was all that they had to fill themselves up with. There was a hopeless despair. The Russians think the world of their little children, and it is the most terrible thing in life to watch a child jitarved to death—-it is •o slow and agonising. I saw rooms full of children whose parents had died of starvation; the children lay there, too exhausted and ill even to cry. How would you feel if it were your own children? Your’s happen to be born in New Zealand. Theirs happen to be born in Russia. No child is responsible for anything that has happened. “The Russian health authorities are working day and night to combat disease and help the aufferers. The Government has spent £191,000,000 on relief. Even all the food that has come into Russia is utterly inadequate for the needs of all these people. Australia has sent £150,000 of food. What can New Zealand do? It depends upon what each does. Those of you who cannot give cash, send some of your own produce into the market to sell for the fund. In Australia, the farmers have given wool, wheat, butter, cheese, meat, etc. “We can absolutely guarantee that what you give gets to the needy people. We have only lost | per cent, of all the we have sent into Russia. Fifteen shillings of your money will save a life, and Is will feed a child for a week. The New Zealand money is cabled free of charge to the High Commissioner in London, and is transformed into food, as much as possible into New Zealand products. This food is distributed between the ‘Save the Children’ organisation and the Society of Friends organisation working in the famine areas.

“The crisis be over by September if the harvest is good. America is feeding eleven million people, and has sent 122,000 tons of seed wheat, which ensures the nekt harvest. Our task is to hel£ to keep the people alive until the harvest. This question is infinitely bigger than patty politics or sect. It is a humanitarian and Christian appeal, and from the economic standpoint, until Russia is put on to her feet again, there will be dislocation and unemployment in other parts of the world. The countries are so interdependent. The need is urgent. ‘F* gives twice who gives quickly.’”