The New York herald., 1921-12-04
STARVING RUSSIAN
PARENTS ABANDON
STRICKEN CHILDREN
Thousands Turned Into the
Streets That Soviet May
Find Food for Them.
TAXES TAKE SUPPLIES
Hospitals Crowded, but
Without Drugs, Food
or Beds.
TYPHUS rs SPREADING
-
Peasants Plant Seed Corn for
Harvest for Those Who
Live to See 1t.
TYPHUs is SPREADING
By SIR PHrLrp GIBBS.

BY SIR PHILIP GIBBS.
specsdI Cabls to THE New YORK HERALD.
KAzAN, Russia via Moscow, Dec. L.
Since I wrote the beginning Of my
account Of the great hunger in Russia
the SHOWS have been failing steadily
and for thousands Of versts there Is one
white wilderness broken only by the
black woods and little white capped
villages and here and there solitary
figures trudging down lonely tracks.
The boat in which I went down the
volga was the last before the river
highways were closed. The starving
people in the famine districts are
blockaded by winter whose approach
they saw with terror. because II
barred the way Of escape.
Relief can only come to them now
by sledge. and in one district the last
horses are dying for lack Of fodder. Sc
there will not be many soon to draw
the sleighs.
eome peasants through an interpreter
whether they had any reserves of
food, however small. to tide them over
the winter.
One man In whose cottage / stood
said: 1T have twenty pounds Of
potatoes left, but must give FIVE tc
the Government to pay my tax or go
TO prison. After that have nothing
for my wife and child. Last week my
horse fell dead. There Is no hope for
u.s.
He stood tall and square, with his
big peasant hand on the shoulder Of a
girl Of 10 years or so who gazed at us
gravely from the big eyes in her little
white face. She was the last child
left to her parents out of a family of
six because five went away one day
with those trainloads Of children on
the tracks toward Siberia. To what
fate. God alone knows. though terrible
rumors como back about the death
rate Of those Siberian camps.
Taxed Though Starving.
The father and mother wept when
the children went. but now they are
glad because they will have no food
even for the girl that remains. The
mother showed me rotting cabbage
leaves and spoke the Russian word for
bread. Out of that refuse she would
make something like bread.
In the yard Of one cottage was q
little black COW, and the wife Of its
owner told US she had TO provide three
pounds Of butter as a Government tax.
She had scraped up two pounds. but
be killed because they could not
feed It.
That these people should be taxed
out of their starvation seemed to me
inhuman cruelty, and I cannot yet
reconcile II with the fact, which
know is true. that the Soviet Govern
ment abandoned acquisitions which de-
pleted the peasants reserves last
year and ordered the local govern
ments {, remit all tsxations In the
famine aresS
One may explain Il only by the
knowledge that oroers issued by the
Central Executive remain of paper
value only for so long time after
their issue. and often with no result
whatever.
Be that as II may. am certain
neither the central Government at
Moscow nor the local government Of
the Federal States nor the peasants
along the volga regions have any re-
serve sufficient for their needs to live
during the winter months.
What 1 have told about individual
peasants, little families with bare cup
boards, mothers, wailing over starving
babies--stories could be multiplied un'
I'll I sickened my readers BY miserable
repetition--is true Of great territories
in Russia, immense populations In all
Russia I have seen, from Moscow to
the Tartar Republic, though Moscow
itself is best supplied
National Reserves nxhaustes.
National reserves are exhausted
until next harvest time.
In the great Tartar State. which
has Kazan as It's capital, from which
am now returning to Moscow, there
were 8,40o 900 people, Of whom 1,300.-
900 were children. OF those, 100000
children had been supplied bare rations
by Soviet committees, aided by the
American relief
For adult folk. especially the sick,
tho central Government supplied $4,000
rations. But on November j these
rations ceased; the central Govern
ments were unable to supply more.
In one canteen there is food to last
scarcely one month. After that there
viii be no food Most OF the seed
corn sent down by the central Gov
ernment was sowu by peasants who
were hungry at sigh. OF II, but were
self restrained. thinking of next years
harvest for those who live to see r..
II was not nearly enough for pext
years harvest, and many fields re-
main unsown.
A man came on board our boat at
the landing stage which goes mp to the
city called Spassk, famous in Russian
history.
He was refugee from this town. a
good looking. intelligent, pleasant man
uered fellow.
He sat In the saloon with me. drink
Ing a cup of-cocoa, while some cases
Of food from tho American relief adj
ministration were being unloaded.
Presently he began 10 talk to me
through an Interpreter There was a
leok of eager wlstfuiness In his eyes