The White Russians in the province consist in part of refugees who fled from the early fury of the Bolshevik: and in part of Cossacks and peasants from the Seven Rivers District and the Altai. Some settled in the country districts and assumed their old Peasant occupations. in. surroundings Dut lite different from what they For some time it has been freely mentioned that General Sheng hav been receiving assistance from over the northern border, and his success over the younger and more modern 'Ma Chung-Yin has been. openly. attributed" to this source. 'This hasbeen especially so among. the Chinese Communists now on tha' run before Government troops Kweichow. Some of these Commun: sts, Incidentally, have already crossed {nto Szechuan, but considerably to west of the place expected, entering, that province at almost its extreme south-western mostly Lolos—flereo' and warlike provisions for a moving army almost 'These Communists, whose objective ig. stil, In spite of their enforced change' of route, the area held Reds_ in north-eastern Szechuen on. the Shenst border, are said to have declared that the' new Soviet state! hope to establish there will have direct support from' Russia by way' of Sinkiang and Kansu. What truth rade Penetration Russian influence in Sinkiang is no new thing. Two-thirds of the frontier of the New Dominion runs-with the Russian frontier and trade between the two territories has gone on for many years. In Czarist days there was_a bounty of sixteen gold roubles for every pony-load of Russian goods that crossed the frontier. Now that the Soviet hes completed the Turk-'Sib Railway, running close to. the border, and built two branch lines from li to the Sinkiang border, goods now there are Russian signboards advertising any trade from. saddiemaker to goldsmith. There are also the White Russian regiments before mentioned.
It, as they fear, Red influence becomes really predominant in Sinkiang, the plight of these Whites will be: aimeult. "Already a number have erossed the border into India, but most of these have been of the destitute type and hence a burden on the Public, the Government of India has {taken steps to limit the number who will be allowed to cross in future. Their other lines of retreat may be through Tibet, where they are" unwelcome, or through Kansu, which closed to them since the White Russian regiments were the principal cause of the defeat of the invasion of Sinkiang by Kansu forces some years "Those Whites who have escaped from the province and reached Shang-hal paint sad pictures of the anxiety' of those they have left behind, who Delleved that they had found a new home, safe from the wrath of the rulers they had defied. 'They are asking themselves whether they will have to uproot themselves again, sel abandon the farms and trades' they have built up in their years of exile. Their only comfort is that the Soviet fs unlikely to take action at the present juncture—may never take faction, in fact. And to this hope they are clinging, though there are Reds upon the horizon.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.