The Threatening Famine Members of the Alliance Francaise had the pleasure of meeting a distinguished compatriot on Monday in the person of Mgr. de Guébriant, now in Shanghai on his return from a mission to Chita. A long record of distinguished service to the Roman Catholic Church in China has culminated in the appointment of Mgr. de Guébriant as supreme head of the Mission Etranger; and he is returning to France shortly to take up this appointment.
Dancer to Far Eastern Repvstic.
Some months ago, the Pope deputy ed Mgr. de Guébriant to visit the Fay astern Republic and investigate the condition of the Roman Catholic community there, in view of reports that calamity is. threatening the region in the form of a famine this winter. It was an account of This journey from Harbin to Chita which Mgr. de Guébriant gave yesterday afternoon, and in the course of which he unfortunately confirmed the reports that, in common with other parts of Russia, the Far Eastern Republic is faced with a serious economic situation.
The speaker related that he found some 50 priests ministering to about 30,000 Roman Catholics, chiefly of Polish nationality, and the great majority of them living under miserable conditions, It appears that the peasant population, well provied with stock and farm produce, is comparatively well off, but the pinch of poverty is being most acutely felt by the industrial population. Wages amount to little or nothing, and the best that could be obtained in a vast number of cases w small daily ration of food.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.