Aug. 29.
The changed conditions in Hart ogee rnlane i Bed ail of helping the latest victims of Russia's travail. Much effort is expended on discouraging Russians from coming to Shanghai. It is pointed out that conditions are not favourable to. the adventure, but apparently the poignant situation in Harbin makes even the most problematical enterprise justifiable. Figures are difficult to cite with Jany accuracy, but it is believed that some 1,600 Russians wit! be making their way here before October arrives. Many of them are ready coming. Not only does their plight give the community cause for anxiety, but it actually, accentuates the great difficulties which have confronted Russians}
Jong resident here.
Public attention has been drawn' by discussions at Geneva to one' special aspect of this problem. It is desirable, therefore, that the non-Russian foreign comrhunity should endeavour to appreciate the realities of the situation as it al fects Shanghai. Sympathy with [appeals for distressed Russians is admittedly diMeult to evoke bejeause of the very facts on which the League has based its call to [international humanitarian effort.
Shanghailanders do not always realize that the Russian women who, rightly or wrongly, come under the social ban, represent only section of the community. Noone would or should desire to point fat them with the finger of scorn. They are' generally the victims of their own weakness and the unhappy circumstances which have Jed them from economic disaster fatally easy, if, in the long run, calamitous, courses. There are others; and on their account it is desirable that public sympathy and practical compassion should mobilized. The other day a few posts were vacant in a certain com= mercial institution which required Russian women for hard manual labour and the wages offered for each employee were $40 a month. For those posts applicants, far in excess of the number of the vacancies, were immediately forthcoming—among them women and girls of breeding and good educa~ tion. The episode is significant. Tt effectively shows that, even in the most desperate straits, a firm determination to preserve a self-respecting economic independence animates the Russian woman in Shanghai as it is would her British, American and French sisters' in similar plight. Surely. then, an appeal for "material help' in such circumstances will not be ignored, dificult though the present times are for all classes without exception.
'The development of this problem' raises among non-Russians the! question whether, by some process intercession "or intervention, steps could not be taken to invoke the official assistance the representatives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in dealing with it. It is recognized that to many Russians jin Shanghai such an expedient would be distasteful and that the/any pretentious claims or pose, Soviet itself might fect political obstacles were insuperable. In view of the passing of the their race and culture.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.