The record-union., 1892-02-03
THE DISTRESS IN RUSSIA.

THE DISTRESS IN RUSSIA.
Countess Norraikow, writing in Har-
peq'S WeekIy, after going over the whole
ground of the Russian famine district,
estimates that it will require at least two
billion rubles Ia billion dollars) to pro-
vide the food, clothing, seed and cattle
that shall be necessary to tide over this
distress, and it is needed at once.
She says that Count Tolstoi, with the
help of his wife, two sons and two daugh-
ters, is feeding over thousand families
In Moscow he has started relief fund,
while at many other points he has opened
soup kitchens, to which the famishing
people flock in thousands, blessing the
philanthropist's honored name.
In Kazan Province alone, she adds,
there are $4,000 human beings dying of
hunger. while fifteen neighboring prov
vinces contain twenty-seven millions of
people almost as bad! ga truly pathetic
picture is presented by these millions of
ton without murmur, while the Gov
ernment Relief Committee have as yet
only discussed means of alleviating the
distress. The deliberations of this dis
tinguished commission, under the presi-
dency of the Czarowitz, are securely
bound with red tape and impenetrable
mystery, though, thus far, they have
seemed to consist mainly in diligent
efforts to suppress all accurate news re-
lating to a calamity unparalleled in the
history of this SORROW stricken empire.
Perhaps this is why the civilized nations
of the globe have as yet looked only with
apparent Indifference upon this lamet-
able situation"
She quotes from NJ. Mikhnevitch, a
staff correspondent of the st. Peterburg
NoUoStt, to show that the famine is in
creasing at a most appalling rate, and
that the aid thus far rendered is but a
drop in the ocean of distress. In defense
of her claim that quite billion of dollars
must be raised to wipe out the famine,
the same authority is quoted as saying:
1t has been estimated by expert statisticianS
That 10 sustain the lives OF these 100000
families till next harvest there shall be re-
CURED 9,OO0,0O0,000 pounds of grain, 50,-
100000 rubles for the purchase of seed;
4,5oO,o0O,OOO pounds of meat; 75O, 100000
rubles for the purchase of horses, cows, sheep,
hogs and poultry, and 50,000,000 rubles for
clothes.
The Countess will find very general
agreement in this country with her be-
lief that the situation is the direct and
logical result of the despotic system of
government which maintains its power
by the aid of 100000 soldiers and an
army of police and spies. But when all
Russia has been a soldier of civilization
in the far East, and has enforced upon
Asiatic interlopers in Europe more wise
and humane conduct than their natural
tendency would have permitted.
Russia has been the foe of Mussr1lman
fanaticism, which for centuries oppressed
and devastated some of the fairest States
of the East. AS Rambaud has so well
put it, Russia colonies rather than con-
quers." We can agree with Cucheval-
Clariguy that, while Russia's Asiatic
policy has been to consolidate her power,
it has been to the profit of civilization.
In short, Russian advance and policy has
made possible what was ten years and
more ago entered upon, the beginning of
the end of Moslem domination in
Europe.
But Russia has been also the steadfast
friend of the United States; herself a
despotism, she, of all monarchical nations,
has most graciously done obeisance to
free government in the Western hemis-
phere. By her silent but potential infiu-
ence in our behalf she stood between us
and European chicane and plotting in
the darkest hours of national distress. The
commonest impulses of humanity impel
us to proffer relief to the suffering poor
of Russia. No matter what the past or
what the form of government in the pres
ent, some millions of human beings in
the friendly power are starving, dying
in the most awful wretchedness, and
Americans will be untrue to themselves
and the character of our nation if they
withhold relief, bouuteous and prompt.