The Cordova daily times., 1922-03-17


 Russia, was giving here by Carl E Floete, one of the administration g workers who returned recently after three months spent in the Volga dis trict Floete broke down under the strain of the work and being cut off from the outside world for weeks and had to leave temporarily. l q hope to go back" he said. "The organization is saving that part oi Russia and could do much more if it had more funds. No one who has not seen it can have any idea what : famine is like. It is terrible beyond words. People are dying in the streets every day. their bodies bloat- ed and distorted by starvation. Those who exist from day to day do so only by eating the carcasses of horses and dogs and cats that also have starved.
 'I went with child-feeding sta tion that has headquarters at Samara and feeds 50,000 children. My own headquarters in this district were at | Pugachov, a village about 125 miles south of Samara, but which, owing to poor transportation, it took five days to reach by railroad. Most of tho supplies went in over this road, although some were conveyed by | haIf-doad horses.
 MIDST AWFUL THING
 IS THEIR APATHY"
 '"The most awful thing about the people is their apathy. They don't care, and just wait from day to day until they shall drop beside other members of their family who went first. The dead lie in the streets where they fall. In the houses the men, women and children sit hope lessly against the walls staring into vacancy and waiting for death. I was the only American man they had ever seen. but they were hardly in terested in me. even when they knew I brought food
 *'They used to take it in their hands, with tears in their eyes, and look at it and say 'espiabo,' which means thank you They were more pathetic than anything I have ever fN tn feed them and crv by the hour. What misery Their little arms were mere sticks. their stomachs were bloated from eating clav. their eyes deep sun- en- g Rut after we had fed them lit- tie while we could see their eyes be- come clear and their cheeks fill ont little and they got better. Those we could feed will live. the others will die, and at present we can only feed from 25 to 40 per cent.
 "Women used to come in and beg for food for their children. but we did not have enough for all and it was the hardest thing I ever did to refuse them. We gave them white bread nearly every day. rice pudding twice a week, beans twice week and cocoa twice a week That is not much, brt it was luxury for them. "cAMELS WERE MY
 DULY CO'1FOt I"
 "There was so little food in the district that after my beans ran out in the few weeks I had only two meals day, bread and soup. And l felt then as if I were robbing the people. The isolation was trying, for aside from my interpreter there was no other white man in the vil- lage. The camels were my only comfort. I always thought camels needed a warm climate. but there were hundreds of them, and all were fat How they kept fat I don't know, although they would eat anything, even nails. When I got unusually downhearted one of these ludicrous camels would bray and cheer me up. The people don't kill them because they are too valuable; they are the only means of transport left. '"There is absolutely no seed left in the district, and what the people | will do for crops next year is more than can sec. On my trip out did not see single blade of Winter wheat, and that section used to be the great granary of Europe" Mir Floete was in Pugachov at the time woman bandit, famous throughout all the Volga region as the companion of the Cossack Chie1 Sarof, raided the town at the head of 500 men and women cossacks | The bandits took all Sf the food and