Mr. Libby obtained his information from Arthur J. Watts, an English Friend, who has been engaged in relief work in Russia. Mr. Watts gave Mr. Libby a translation of the reports of Russian commissars from various cities.
It appears from the commissars' report that the situation of the children varies greatly in the different centres. In some cities, such as Vitebsk, it is reported that whole families are perishing from starvation. In others, such as Smolensk, Yaroslav, the children are reported to be obtaining sufficient nourishment. The report from Vitebsk stated that the bread substitutes give the children dysentery which it is impossible to cure.
The commissars report that in several centres the children had been unable to obtain bread for a long time and that in others no kind of fats or meats were obtainable and that milk was received rarely.
The children of Moscow were declared to have no sugar nor fats, and to be either starving or falling ill through under-nourishment. Inmates of the children's homes in Novgorod are starving, the reports stated. They receive no meat, butter, potatoes, milk or salt, but live on a daily portion of sour cabbage soup, millet cooked in water, and black bread made from bad flour. They are suffering from scurvy as a result of undernourishment.
For all this the Bolshevists are largely—though, of course, not wholly—responsible. Whatever the degree of their responsibility may be, it is an outrageous falsehood to talk of great educational advances under such conditions which are admitted as being far worse than anything Russia has hitherto experienced.
Yet the Soviets have never ceased to put forth inflated and grandiose paper schemes as if certain of accomplish-
