Appalling Conditions Under the Soviet Revealed by Chief Bolshevik Official Terrible admissions as to the Jstate of Russia under Bolshevist rule are made by Comrade Lunacharsky, the Commissar for /Edueation, in an appeal to Soviet citizens, which was quoted in a reent issue of the "Times" of Lon-
Jdon. The worst enemies of the [Communist Government have drawn no more shocking picture.
The Education Minister asks for money to relieve "hundreds thousands of vagrant children, Jsome degenerated into a state of Jsemi-savagery, some bordering on idiocy, while others have had their Jwits so sharpened and excited by collision with life that they have become dangerous enemies of society."
The Russian authorities confess that this problem is "the most terrible leer on the Soviet Union's body," and regret that they can hardly make any impression on "the dark sea of child misery and suffering which drive children into vice, crime, and hatred of society."
Lunacharsky expresses the fear that unless private charity is generously exercised the stream of vagrant clrildren will become n flood lof pollution, "poisoning the entire current of life."
No provision seems to be made for orphan children under Soviet rule. The "Izvestia" says that a fate no less dreadful than that of the vagrant hordes threatens every child in Russia. "To-day he lives comfortably, enjoying his parents' tender caresses, but the parents' Jnewth would place him on a level to-morrow with these homeless, hungry wanderers."
Attempts have been made to blind people abroad to the wretched condition of the Russian masses, but! here we have an open confession rom one of the most respectable lof the; Soviet rulers.
And this is the state of affairs ito which the guidance of men like Borodin, Dosser, Lepse, Smorgins, Vaskroff and the like, would reduce China. Even in the worst times of famine in China, we hear of nothing 0 terrible as what one of the chief members of the Bolshevik Government admits is the normal state lof affairs under Bolshevism.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.