To the Editor of the "Nonta-Cnina Datty News."
Sm,—I wish to appeal to your paper on behalf of the Shanghai Refugee Relief Committee to do something more towards putting -Lefore the public the position here respect to the influx of destitute refugees from Siberia.
these _people—Russians, Poles, Finns, Esthonians, Letts,' Rumanians,' ete.—have been carried to Shanghai from their distant homes by the tides of war and revolution, and by the thousand different chances, hindrances and compulsions that rule human destiny when the moorings are parted, One man was telling me yesterday that two years ago he was within a few miles of his home; if only he could get there his troubles would be over. But those few miles were death; it would be madness to attempt them, and so the better way seemed to be further east, and yet further east, and so on until he had reached the furthest east. But here the hopes that had held him up all through have deceived him unless some friendly hand is stretched out, for there are no means of obtaining work in Shanghai whereby he can earn enough to carry him on, and all that remains for him is to starve or go back to the hell from which he has escaped.
And his is not the real tragedy utter all, for this lies in the family and the women. Driven out on the long trail like herded cattle; ravished by every will stronger than their own that chance brings along, until such happening becomes an accepted condition of their unstable lives and the only teans of solving the difficulty of living; harassed by disease, starvation and threatened massacre til spried out by remorseless fate our doors, some with minds unhinged and all at odds with the world, is it any wonder that some
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.