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Show prrp DjpJrf PS OLIO UluilLU 00, By LADISLAS CZAPSKI. Written for the. International News Service. CONSTTANINOrLE, April 21. Spiridion Gronloff was a ban., director in Nikolaeff, not far from Odessa, and when tho war broke out his fortune had mounted to about '800,000 rubles. Besides, he owned several pieces of land In tho district of Kleff. Ho and his young wife, with their two children, chil-dren, arc in Constantinople now, penniless pen-niless re fu sees Rubles to Mr. Gromoff were Just merely rubles. In Russia, before the! revolution, he was a man oi wealih, al-! most a millionaire, and he belioved in j Russia. That was why he never put1 away any of his wealth in London, 1 Paris or New York for the rainy day. I In the good old days his cash accu-l mulations alone made him a rich man ' according to Russian standards. Hisi 800,000 rubles were worth about 80, ' 000 pounds sterling. In American doM lars his rubles meant 5400.000. As the revolution wore on, however, the ruble kept losing its exchango value so rapidly rap-idly that by the time the bolsheviks made their "coup d' etat his rubles on the London exchango would have brought him something like 8.500 pounds sterling. But by that time also' his monoy had ceased to earn money and he had dug deeply into his savings, sav-ings, and as a matter of fact he really could have gotten only about 1.500 1 pounds sterling for what remained. ' Since the bolshevik regime and during dur-ing the civil war which followed. Mr.; jGromoff's bank was linle more than, I a weird joke. It brought him noth-j jing. He lived on his remaining cash.' I spending on the average 6,0o0 rubles a1 I month to keep his wife, children and, himself alive. During last year's bol- .shevik occupation of Odessa he moved, to that city from Nikolaeff and he, 'hoped persistently for better days. jWhen Denlkin captured 'the great port town he was sure something of his I ruins could yet be saved, j But as the weeks passed, the rublo depreciated swiftly, and at the end J when he and his family were about to; ! board the refugee boat for Constanti- nople, his remaining 200,000 rubles I wcro selling at 6,000 to a pound stcr-: ling. That, is what he sold his own ' rubles for. and he landed here with1 the imposing sum of 33 pounds ster-' ling. |