To the Editor of the "Norts-Cuina Datty News."
Srr,—With reference' to your leading article in this morning's issue and also to "Shanghailander's" letter.
I am in receipt of a letter dated in Vladivostok on January 24 last and written to me by a foreign con_ sular officer at that port.
He states: "The government here are proscribing all that are suspected of being White. More than 5,000 have been sent to Russia. They are given 48 hours to get ready and are herded in box cars from 35 to 40 not counting the children.. They have an iron stove in the car but no fuel, this they must get themselves. They have an allowance. of one pound of black.bread a day and nothing else.
"People who have been living here for 30 years have to leave their businesses, houses and everything and be herded into box cars like cattle, and they take from two to three months to get to Russia, where most of them naturally have no resources whatsoever. It is said that some of them have frozen to death in the train in Siberia. The scenes at the station where. these trains start are beyond description. One officer who was getting into a box car with his wife and three kids, where there were already 37 grownups and I don't know how many children, told me he had left his house in the suburbs open as he could not sell any of his furniture and the cow that they kept for the children's milk was in an outhouse as they could not sell this even for 15 roubles) When he gets to Russia he will have to beg.
's teacher of Russian, a girl of 18 or 19 had to get up from a sick bed to go and all the money she had was 15 roubles that I gave her. This to last her for three months on the journey, and as she is a complete stranger where she is going you will imagine her condition on arrival especially og she goes alone, "And all the time the proscription lists are being published daily.
"The best people are arrested and kept in cellars, with no explanation and no accusation and their families and friends are refused not only permission to see them or feed them but they are not told if the prisoner is alive or dead or anything about him. You may imagine' the needless anxiety and suffering caused by these methods. A horrible system of hate and suspicion with no thought of the result.""
I presume from the tone of "Shanghailander's" letter that he is responsible for the whole of the Russian refugees, their housing and their feeding, and that he is feeling the burden. Otherwise he would hardly suggest that they be turned out of a country in which they have as much right as he has as long as they obey the laws.
Should he not yet have shouldered this burden it is possibly the thought of having to bear a very minute part of it that occasions his indignation.
3 I am, "Tr You Can'r Herp Don't HINDER."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.