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Show Fill FACING RIISS1 PEOPLE Thousands Certain to Die of Hunger, Ogden Officer Says. Special to The Tribune. OGDEX. Nov. 10 That he firmly believes be-lieves thousands of persons will starve in Itussia this Tvlnter, and that even the collapse of the Bolshevik government could not forestall the great famine non-pending, non-pending, -was one of the views expressed today at the Weber club by Lieutenant Earl Lenoir Packer, of the American military mission, after three years in Russia. He was introduced by President W. L. Wattls of the club. Some of the conditions in Russia of which little has been said or written were outlined. He said that within the boundaries of the Bolshevik territory are the principal railroads of the empire, and thev are ill need of repairs and are gradually grad-ually losing efficiency. The railroads, he declared, never could be made efficient as long as present conditions prevail. He added that as a result of this situation the food, fuel and clothing conditions, which are appalling in the largo cities, will not soon be improved. Lieutenant Packer said In part: "When 1 arrived in Petrograde late in .Tanuarv, 19 IT. I found that the food and fuel situation was critical and there was considerable political unrest found, as well, that the city was still talking ot the killing of the black monk, Rasputin, in the preceding December. It was only a few weeks later early in March that what had begun in Petrograd as a protest pro-test primarily against the food and fuel situation developed with startling suddenness sud-denness into the Russian revolution, resulting re-sulting in the abdication of the czar, the establishment of a provisional government, gov-ernment, and. almost simultaneously, the beginning of the council of soldiers' and workmen's deputies, which body soon began to hamper the functioning of the provisional government by its bid lor j and acquirement of power, based on the support of the soldiers and workmen. "Since the armistice the allied policy has been to return to a peace basis with the crreatest possible speed. As a part of such a general policy it was decided to withdraw allied troops from north Prussia, Prus-sia, (I might remark parenthetically that there were opponents to such a policy, opposition thereto being based principally on the ground of honorably meeting the obligations to the pro-ally anti-German Russians which the presence in north Russia of allied troops had Involved.) At the same time the allies decided to assist the anti-Bolshevik forces with credit, munitions and supplies. "I believe there are still some American troops in Siberia. Certain people from time to time criticise the government because be-cause thev are still there. But to me it seems that their presence there, like the presence of the army of occupation on j the Rhine, Is merely the outgrowth of conditions resulting from the great war and that we are only endeavoring to fulfill ful-fill our international obligations by maintaining main-taining them there. There may be people peo-ple who object to American troops being on the Rhine today to see that Germany fulfills her promise; but. if there are, they are being mighty quiet about 1L "On the one hand is the soviet or Bolshevik Bol-shevik government, with its capital in Moscow, which controls, roughly, all that part of European Russia lying between the Ural mountains on the east and the Finnish and Polish and Baltic boundaries on the west, and between a line on the south running from the Polish boundary, just above Kiev and below Saratov, to the Ural mountains, and the region in the north aroupd the shores of the White sea, where che government of the northern north-ern region is pontinulng to maintain its Independence. Recently, in the direction of Petrograd and on the south, the anti-Bolshevik anti-Bolshevik forces, have been more or Uss successfully- decreasing the size of the terrltorv controlled by the Eolshevlki; on the other hand, the Bolsheviki are reported report-ed to have had some successes In the east. "Within t'.e boundaries of the Bolshevik Bol-shevik territory are the principal railway and Inland waterway systems of European Euro-pean Russia. They are badly In need of repairs and have teen for many months. They can never be made efficient effi-cient so long as present conditions prevail, pre-vail, preventing the Importation of needed supplies and equipment. Consequently, food, fuel and clothing conditions, which are appalling, especially in the large cities, will not soon be improved. Manufacturing Manu-facturing is almost at a standstill. Agriculture Agri-culture is far below normal. I am firmly convinced that many thousands of people peo-ple will starve to death there during the winter; the immediate collapse of the Bolshevik government probably could not prevent It. "There Is the strictest censorship of the nress In soviet Russia; there Is no such thing as freedom of travel; no such thing as political freedom, as we know it; there is not even what the Bolshevik! call a "dictatorship of the proletariat.' as T see it, but rather a 'dictatorship through the proletariat' by ihe minute minority or Bolshevik leaders an autocracy rhat Is worse than that of the Romanoffs, Hohen-zollerns Hohen-zollerns or Hapsburgs." |
