The other twelve cars were like this one except that all of them had at least two or three—and usually six or seven—feeble, crackly-voiced old men with their complement of women and children, and one contained three young fellows of twenty who had probably smuggled themselves into the car and who cringed when my Polish interpreter lunged on them with his rapier of light and retreated into a corner where two cows stood with necks crossed in affection. These youths knew they had no business in that car, for even in the chaos of retreat the word had been passed among the civilian refugees: "Women, children, and old men first in the cars; young men can walk." But there have not been enough cars even for the weak, the very young, and the very aged, and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, have found their graves along the slushy, muddy roads they were following toward Petrograd and Moscow from the occupied provinces of Poland and the Baltic. These people in the freight cars at least had had transportation and a crude kind of shelter. But of the two million refugees who are overcrowding Moscow and Petrograd, to the great detriment of the health average of the two Russian capitals, many thousands came there several hundred weary miles on foot. And others, less determined or weaker, are still straggling in or are lingering by the way, some of the latter dying and some finding shelter in small towns between the twin big cities and the front.
Millions of refugees.
People of all ranks and stations.
Some estimates place the number of Russian refugees at from ten to fifteen million; thirteen million is the estimate of the Tatiana Committee, one of the most influential relief organizations in Russia, named after the second daughter of the Czar, who is its honorary head. By race the refugees are principally Poles, Jews, Letts, and Lithuanians, but they come from all ranks and stations of life, rich and poor alike, now all poor, thrown from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their bodies by the grim chances of war.
Thousands must starve and freeze.
In times of peace and prosperity the sudden impoverishment of such a large mass of people would tax the relief and charity of Russia to the limit; but now, when all food prices are from one hundred to three hundred per cent higher than before the war—when even the well-to-do have difficulty to get enough bread, sugar, and coal—it is inevitable that thousands of these homeless ones should starve and freeze to death. Thousands have already suffered this fate, but hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more, will die this way before spring unless relief comes quickly and bountifully from abroad, for Russia cannot cope with the emergency alone. Unless Russia's allies or neutrals begin at once to pour into Russia a stream of food to fill the stomachs of these hungry, homeless ones, this will be the bitterest winter in Russian history, a winter whose horrors will far transcend the terrible winter of 1812, when Napoleon ravaged Poland and sacked Moscow.
Great Britain must bolster weaker allies.
Great Britain, who is holding up some of her weaker allies in many ways, sweeping mines from the White Sea for Russia, and with France bolstering the remnant of the Belgian army in Flanders, is doing much to alleviate the suffering of Russia's refugees by unofficial action. The Great Britain to Poland Fund, organized and supported by such prominent Britons as Lady Byron, Viscount Bryce, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Rosebery, and the Lord Mayor of London, at the instance of Princess Bariatinsky, who is better known as the famous Russian actress, Madame Yavorska, is feeding between 4,000 and 7,000 refugees daily at Petrograd, Moscow, Minsk, and at several small towns close to the front.
The Petrograd "Feeding Point."
Sheds for shelter.