We print elsewhere an appeal made by the Imperial War
Relief Fund on behalf of the starving people of Russia. In half the great derelict Empire the population is in the grip °Lone of the most terrible famines of which the world has record. The chief causes of this appalling disaster are three. The first is the folly, and still more the hideous tyranny, cruelty, and injustice, of the Communist Government at Moscow. They began by confiscating the surplus of food produced by the peasants. But they soon found that it is contrary to human nature to toil early and late to grow corn for other men to take away and eat—men who offer nothing or only worthless paper in exchange. As in all super-tyrannies, the peasants have only been growing enough to keep themselves alive. You cannot make men till the fields as you make them, or try to make them, work in a factory. The force of arms functions badly in a ploughed field. Then the Communists tried raids on the granaries. But the policy of plunder has only increased the scarcity.
