To the Editor of the *"Nonrm-CurA Dany NEWS"
Sm—In a time when almost the whole population of Europe is suffering from horrors of the war, the Russian writers, emigrants also, could not avoid the common fate, and thus they had to experience all the troubles of flight once more, Twenty-five years ago they left the precincts of their country as they did not want to reconcile themselves with the order that had renounced the liberty of thought and speech. Being dispersed they were not silent.
'The elder generation of the Rusgian Literati abroad—Bunin, B. Zaitseff. I. Shmeleff, Aldanoff and others—were -feal representatives of the "Russian Spirit of Culture;" the junior generation has given' many conspicuous names, amongst others, Gazdanoff. Sinn, Ladinsky.
The fact that Bunin, a Russian emigrant-author, had been elected a Nobel laureate gives evidence of a recognition that Russian writers, em-grants, are worthy successors of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgaeneff, Tchekhoff and others.
Now tha Russian writers are silent; they do not write books, they cannot follow their calling in Europe, which has become a theatre of the greatest and most devastating war. Many of them have become ruined again. bereft of all their rights and on the verge of perdition.
The L. N. Tolstoy's Fund in USA. under the presidency of a daughter of the great writer, A, Tolstaia, has been recently informed:
There are no jobs in' France. Liszt: Hunger is so swcng that several cases pean names than those of Tolstoy and In 1928 the centenary of the birthday of the great Russian writer, Lev Tolstoy, was celebrated by all the civilized world, and it can be presumed that the fate of the Russian by singing writers is of importance to foreign circles, and foreigners should therefore also visit the concert-ball.
We cannot help recollecting the call for sacrifice that had been issued twenty years ago by Boris Zaitseff, then a member of the All-Russia Committee of the Assistance to the Hungry:
Let us pass by hatred and petty calculations, pass by nullity, obscurity, violation and deformity, and do a good deed for the sacred covenant of Russian literature and the immemorial truth of the Christian nations, never forgetting the unshaken Commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.