The Monroe journal., 1922-02-10
SPRING WILL REVEAL THE
DEAD STREWN ON PLAINS
Skeletons OF Starving Russians VIII
Be Mingled with Bones Of Ami
mails When Shows Melt


When the SHOWS melt next spring
the Russian steppes will be strewn
with skeletons They will resemble
the high prairies OF the American
COW country in the days when the
big cattle outfits had insufficient hay
to carry their stock through a hard
winter
But among the skeletons of cattle
and camels there will be the bones of
hundreds of thousands of men. wom-
ell and children who fell exhausted in
their quest for bread. who lived the
simple lives their pheasant ancestors
lived for centuries and had little con-
ception of the political upheayal
(which made this famine more ter
rible than that Of 1891
They wandered, and millions OF
them are still wandering. There was
nothing to eat in their homes so they
started out on the trek for bread.
Some drifted westward to the Vega
and found death in the typhus ridden
railway centers, or among the hor-
rors of refugee camps along the Vol
ga: others started for Turkestan:
still others started eastward towards
Siberia, the land OF gold and wheat
which has always been so alluring to
the Russian moujic, who heard lit
tie of its vastness. its hardships and
its. .heartlessness. The peasants knew
nothing of modern ways. They were
unable to buy tickets on the rail-
ways, urable to get permits TO ride
on trains burdened with the red
army and food for Moscow and Pc
trograd. When their animals drop
ped dead the families walked on al
ways hoping that food lay over the
next knoll
But the country districts have no
grain. or il pleasant families have
small supply they conceal it in the
effort to prolong their own lives un-
til another crop is harvested. In the
larger towns there is food for sale
at fabulous prices but the starving
refugees have neither money nor
goods to exchange and can only set
down to await death or trudge on
until they sink of exhaustion.
The bodies that lie along the rail-
roads are collected on cars and haul
ed to centers where they are piled in
frozen, snow-covered heaps, to await
burial. Freezing refugees remove all
garments from the dead so that the
frozen bodies are nude when the
scavengers collect them.
,nfliAo lrift opart md wander
aimlessly on to their inevitable fate.
Human instincts are lost and they
become little better than beasts. The
city and town population are SD
hardened to suffering tnat they are
little moved by the misery which lies
all about them. Death seems more
merciful in the country for the refu'
gees; they sink into the white cover
ing of the endless plain, and wolves
strip their bones From Perm and
Ekaterinburg to he Caspian Sea
death is stalking over the steppes.
Russians, Cossacks, Kalmucks, Kirg-
hiz and Tartars alike are meeting
their end with hopelessness and pa
tience begotten of centuries OF un-
equal struggle against political ex-
tortion and unfavorable climate con-
dtions, made worse by ignorance Of
scientific methods of tillirg the soil.
American corn will be too late to
save many of these wanderers thru
the ,steppes, as well as the families
who have elected to make their
villages remote from the railways
rather than endure the hardships and
death their neighbors have suffered
along the main lines Of transporta-
tion.
Entire village populations have
died in the provinces east of the Vol
ga and the animals. which survive
are SO weak it is impossible to get
adecuatc horsepower to deliver food
to the thousands of snowbound, des-
titute settlements far from food sta
tions.