New Britain herald., 1919-05-26

MYSTERY IN FATE
 OF DEATH TRAIN;
 HUNDREDS PERISH
Rcd Cross Workers in Siberia Strive Nainly to Save Doomed
 RIiS

stcppc? It it. perhaps, at a stand l still on the outskirts of some lonely 1 village? Have all it's two thousand 1 Nmore prisoners pcrishcd? Or is 1 it again winding it's mournful way over Siberian railways. bound mo- where, with fresh cargo of human woo and misery shunted from place to place, leaving death and disease in it's wake? What has happened? ? Who can tell?
 The American Rcd Cross is trying to find out. Through it's Siberian com emission it is tapping every source of information. But no one seems to know what has hefalen the ill., fated caravan. Rumors of it came from Eastern Siberia. But when the Red Cross delegates reached Eastern Siberia, the train of death had gone on-nO one knows Whithcr. Again a rumor from Manchuria-or some re- mote section of Western Siberia. But, like an evil phantom, the train has always gone on.
 The only details which have filtered into America have come from the manuscripts sent by Rudolph Bukely, an American, a former banker of Honolulu who is now a Red Cross l worker in Russia The appalling pie ! lures he has given have been con- l f1rmed in every respect by Mrs. Dor l othy M. Thompson, an Am erican woman who returned in March from l Nladivostok where. she spent four months with the American Red Cross 1 But their Knowledge of the train dates no later than last December. What has become of it since? Did the severity of the Siberian winter 1 claim full toll?
 It was sometime last summer that the Red Cross officials first got wind of the appalling affair. Tn it's aim less Wanderings the train stopped for 1 a brief time at Nladivostok. MT. | Bukcly saw it and was mortified. To gether with other Red Cross officials every attempt was made to hold the train until the release of the prison CTS could be. secured. But efforts 1 wore futile. The Red Cross could do no more than insist upon a general cleaning up of the train and it's dis ease and filth laden occupants be- 1 fore it was off again. That was in 1 November Later, Mir. Bukely heard that the train was headed for Chita. in Western Siberia. Telcgrams there proved that it had never reached 1 Chita. And that is all that is known 1 at present.
 Died Like Flies.
 When the prisons were entptied during one of the revolutions at Sa- mara, several thousand men. women and: children who had been incar- cerated. many without even a pretext, were packed into narrow box cars and, conveyed by Russian officers, be- gan an interminable journey over the Siberian railways. No provision has been made for ventilation or sanita- ton, food was entirely insufficient, there was no clothing-nothing, in 1 fact
 Huddled in the narrow confines of ] the box cars like so many animals, 1 the miserable wretched died like flies. l Only seven or eight hundred out of several thousands were alive when the train reached Vladivostok. And that was some three months after it had started. The authorities of the va rious cities and towns at which the train stopped would not permit it to remain within the borders. It was driven along like some unclean thing like an unhappy spirit condemned to wander forever.
 Never were the box cars opened but to take out the dead. They were cast by the waysidc. Unless the train of death has been side-tracked some place and the miscra ble remnants of humanity properly cared for, every one has died ere this. Ii is a ques- ton whether. even with the best of care. a human being who had been on the train several months could 1 be saved
 "I have seen, through the windows l of box cars whose dimensions were tyyp V h1- 9 { who once were human men, women and children, MT. Bukely wrote to the Washington headquarters of the American Red Cross. 'Faces glared at me which I could not recognize as those of human beings! Stark mad ness and terror stared from their eyes and over all the unmistaka ble sign of death. I have seen the dead ] lying along the roadside and fifty or sixty men fighting like dogs for pieces of bread thrown to them by the sympathetic poor people of Nix olsl<'
 MT. Bukely after his first visit to the doomed train said that to kill these people painlcssy would be a far more humane act on the part of the Russian government. The Russian officer in charge of tho train, of whom he demanded some eXplana- ton, made inconsistent and unsatis- factory statements, he says as to the reasons for subjcCtinc the people to such torture,
 Many of these people have been in box cars for five weeks in their 1 original clothing, he continues '"There are from 35 to 40 in box car measuring not more than twenty five by eleven and the doors have been seldom opened except to drag 1 out the dead or some woman who l might better be- I have been told