Sept. 4
We have received from _the Refugee Relief Advisory Committee a copy of the report that they have despatched to Dr. Nansen, the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, on this most pressing question as it appears in Shanghai. Much of the report travels over ground already familiar our readers. But at a time when special efforts are being made to raise money for the repatriation of refugees the main points may well be restated. It appears that on July 80 the Committee telegraphed urgently to Dr. Nansen on the question of the refugees in general and particularly the unhappy men cooped up on board the Eldorado. Dr. Nansen replied that, before he could consider the possibility of assistance, he must have a full written statement of the case. The report, now in answer to this, after briefly detailing the circumstances in which the flood of refugees poured in, estimates that in all probability the tota] number of Russian refugees in the whole area known as Shanghai is not less than 7,000 and of these people fully 3,000 are practically, if not absolutely, destitute, the bulk of the remainder earning a partial and precarious livelihood as temporary shop assistants, clerks, chauffeurs, house servants, newspaper vendors, and in doing odd jobs of one kind and another.
Most of these people live crowded together in small insanitary houses located in the poorest and most densely populated districts of Shanghai and its environments, whilst others hire portions of rooms in the houses occupied by the Chinese themselves. They have no baths, no mosquito nets, little or no furniture or bedding, and in many cases no food other than the single daily meal of soup and bread obtainable at one or other of the two refugee soup kitchens. They have no prospect of work, and the few who have secured temporary or. intermittent employment are able to earn only native pay because of the competition of the Chinese, whose scale of living any ordinary European could not possibly subsist upon for long. They are insufficiently and ~unsuitably clothed for the climatic conditions of Shanghai, where we get extremes of humid heat and cold during the mid-summer and mid-winter periods. There are no free schools and, excepting in a few instances, their children are receiving no education. The babies and little children lack milk and other suitable diet. The
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.