From Our Own Correspondent, Kirin, June 13.
I feel somewhat diffident ip once more writing you about the Russian refugee problem, but you will recognize my disinterestedness when I tell you that the number of refugees in Kirin is now reduced to less than half. There are only about 2,000 now in this city. What I feel so ashamed of is that no solution of the problem which is satisfactory has yet been Found. Month after month passes and still these miserable people are living on the doles of charity with the nightmare of {being sent to Bolshe-yik Russia still overshadowing them. Some years ago I read a book called Blinds Down." The good ladies in that book declined to look out of their back windows at the squalor and misery they could sce from their home. I am afraid this is the attitude of most foreigners in China. From time to time you have made most sti ring appeals but nothing effective has -been done.
Many in sheer hopelessness have gone back to Russia—conflicting reports reach us as to. their fate. The majority still refuse to believe Bolshevik promises and who can blame them? No one who has heard the harrowing tales which 1 have listened to during the last six months could find it in his heart to urge them to return without better guarantees than are forthcoming. To-day a refined young! widow told me the story of her husband's execution and of having witnessed parties of 10 and 15 being marched out daily to be shot in cold blood as recently as last year. I could fill pages with similar stories and yet a recent statement by the Peking correspondent of the "P. & T. Times" shows that Chang Tso-lin also down, for he calmly proposes to send all White Refugees back to Russia. All honour to Chang Tso-lin and the officials working under him for what has been done to keep these unfortunate people from starvation. Of what avail is it that the American Red Cross has spent tens of thousands of dollars in preventing and healing disease? A safe landing-place has not yet been found, but these wrecked and rescued sufferers seem to be in imminent Song of being put ashore with averted eyes. Could one but have an assurance that at. the coming Sino-Russian negotiations these hapless folk will not be bartered away in exchange for a_ railway! one would- have an easier mind.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.