The failure of the grain crops in Russia is already
causing the most acute misery. A letter from a village priest, written to a Moscow paper and quoted in Tuesday's Times, gives a terrible picture of the sufferings endured by the peasantry in the writer's village. "There are persons," he says, "who have already gone two and three weeks without bread, and have barely managed to keep themselves alive on grass and leaves of trees. In one family several children, from seven to fifteen years of age, have become so fearfully weak from hunger, so ghastly pale, and so emaciated, that they can no longer keep up on their swollen feet. In the hut is a jar containing a green powder produced by rubbing the dry leaves of lime- trees between the hands, which has been the only food of this family for a month past." It is asserted, apparently on the same authority, that in many cases even the rural clergy are starving, and that masses of beggars are tramping the country. This latter item of news was to be expected, but it is none the less momentous. The famine is officially acknowledged to extend to thirteen provinces, and the organ of the Finance Minister, while denying certain rumours, admits that the grants for seed alone will exceed 25,000,000.
