The Semi-weekly leader., 1922-08-19
Land OF HORROR
Everywhere In Russia Traveller
Sees Terrible Sights.
"kindest Thing You Can Do to Lot
Of These People Is to XIII Them"
Said RaiIroader.

We had no sooner crossed into Rus
sia than we began to see horrible
sights. And this is the TRUTH was
not expecting 1t. / thought the hor-
rors were confined to certain areas
and that / should have to go and look
for them, writes Eleanor Franklin
Egan in the Saturday Evening Post.
But there Is no area in Russia to-
day that is not horrible; at least
there Is no area In which horrors are
not to be encountered. And though
the soviet authorities spare no effort
in trying to induce the world TO be-
lieve that the famine is confined to
the VOlga valley and that 1t is due
solely to natural causes and causes
over which they had no control, there
is not a man, woman or child in the
country, aside from a favored few
within the government circle or who
have money enough to pay the fan
tastic prices that are demanded for
food, who is getting enough to eat.
This also Is the absolute truth, which
nobody who knows the situation will
seek to deny.
AT every railway station there were
seething mobs of the most awful peo-
pie l had ever seen. They crowded
up under the windows of our car and
walled pitiful wall with their hands
held out.
asked our Latvian porter, who
spoke both English and Russian, what
they were saying, and laughing a bru-
tai laugh, he answered: "They are
saying. For Gods sake give us bread,
give us bread!" He was remember
ing the Bolshevist invasion Of his own
country and the ruthlessness of It.
He had no sympathy for Russians.
Most Of the people were trying to
get on the train; they were going
somewhere, anywhere I suppose, away
from where they were. There were
Red soldiers stationed at each end Of
all the cars, and only those who had
aboard; but the others, in uncontrol-
liable masses, struggled for q foothold
anywhere. We had one continual
fight to keep them out of our car, but
we had to keep them out; our hearts
might ache for them, but they had on
them one thing we were afraid Of
carriers of disease.
We locked our doors, but they
kicked against them and beat upon
the windows with their fists, making
piteous appeals. They clung to the
steps and the trucks and crowded to-
gether between the cars on the coup
ling pins. And 1t was cold, bitter cold.
The country was just one vast inter-
minable stretch of binding white
silence; the villages were buried up
to their thick thatched caves in snow /;
the boards Of the men and the muf-
flers of the women were hung with
icicles; 1t was all a terrible picture
of human suffering.
At one station l stood looking out Of
a window as the train began to move !;
1t gathered speed; there was surge
forward in the crowd and a frantic
shout; then 1 felt the car under me
lift and twist itself with sickening
grind.
One Of the young men l was travel
ing with came up TO me quickly,
turned me away from the window and
said, Don't look We ran over a
woman. She slipped on the icy step
she was trying to hang on to and fell
under the wheelsw
The porter, looking just little bit
shaken himself said, Eyes, and she's
better off Kindest thing you can do
to lot of these people is to kill them.
We don't often make this run without
killing two or three, but it don't seem
right that they should nearly always
be women"
We killed three before we got to
Moscow-all women.