The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1921-10-06
HATEFUL HUNGER
STALKS IN RUSSIA
Associated Press Core
spOndent Tells of Grim
Terror in Land. !
HAVE NO QUTHIE
By Associated Press Leased wire)


Astrakhan, Russia-Hopeless groups
of famine refugees crowd the wharves
of Astrakhan, which in happier times
were filled with the tides of commerce,
Bitter rains are falling almost cons
tinually and the first snow of the Rus
sian winter has whitened the roofs OF
buildings, but the throngs of emigrants
have no shelter while they wait, per-,
haps vainly, for transportation to the
Kuban and Don regions, where they can.
obtain food. Astrakhan is city OF
misery and suffering and death.
The traveller who. has seen RussiSl
in times of plenty may expect to meet
with rosy round faced people. Dis.
illusienment is in store for him, .how-s
ever, for everywhere he sees thin
faces, the skin of which is seeminglys
stretched tight across the cheek bones,
He remembers Astrakhan filled with
industries and commerce, but he finds
it but a shadow of its former self
It's caviar and fishing industries have
dwindled seventy per cent. Where
once two thousand ships daily sailed
up and down mother Volga" there arei
now barely one hundred.
Death seems to dog the footsteps
of the refugees. They are fleeing
from starvation but many hungry
children and adults die from the first
food they eat, the very bread they have
striven for, proving fatal to them in
their weakened condition. Meat or
bread cost 5000 rubles or about five
cents per pound but there, are few who
have money to pay this price.
HerOism in Sacrifice.
Disease has played its part in the
ruin. Black typhus has taken a terri-a
BILE toll during the winter 1920, in
the district farther north as we'll
Forty out of every hundred physicians
died during the awful scourge. Dur
ing the past summer Asiatic cholera
and malaria have carried off thous-4
and of victims.
When one asks the people the cause
of the present terrible condition of af-l
fairs, the inevitable answer is:
"There has been no rain" The only
ray in the gloom is the fact that the
potato crop was slightly larger than
usual, and for the moment this crops
is helping in the solution Of the prob-l
lem of hunger.
Medicines cannot be found here. In
the entire province OF Astrakhan which
measures 10000 square miles there
are only 500 grains of quinine, it is
declared. The correspondent of the
Associated Press has visited several
homes where malaria patients are ly-i
ing. In each he has found the mothers
or wives of sufferers sitting in blank
despair saying: owe have no quinine;
we can do nothing"
A floating hospital is maintained atl
one point in the delta of the Volga3
where sick sailors are taken from Cas-
plan Sea vessels and one hundred
deaths from under nourishment andd
lack of medicines occurred there in
August. Novanoff, in charge of this
hospital, wept for joy when given a
supply of quinine and casesr oil.
Along the western coast ct the Cas-
plan stands the island of Shiloh, where (
enc of the grimmest tragedies Of the
famine was recently enacted. Ma
riners noticed the lighthouse on the
island was darkened went to investi-
gate. They found in the lighthouse
the twelve keepers all dead from star
walton. They had eaten their shoes
and had boiled fur skins to maintain I
life and one by one had succumbed,
the light going out when the last of .
the twelve sank in death.