The Times of Wednesday published a striking appeal to England
from M. Nicola Shishkoff, a distinguished and highly respected member of the Zemstvo Relief Assmslation and ex-member of the Council of Empire, for funds to relieve the famine in the province of Samara, in South- East Russia, a district of some sixty thousand square miles with a population of nearly three millions. M. Shishkoff gives a terrible picture of the distress of the inhabitants, and the inadequacy of the relief funds available from public and private sources. Sixteen years ago, as the result of a famine far less widespread and intense, sixty thousand people perished of starvation, scurvy, and typhus hi the same province, though seventeen millions of roubles were contributed by private charity, and the resources of the State were then not crippled by a disastrous war. "What," he asks, "are we to expect now, when the harvest is twice as bad, when the crops have failed for two consecutive years, and up to the time private benevolence has given barely two million roubles ?" M. Shishkoff, who has been for four months in the famine-stricken districts, and is now undertaking a mission to Great Britain and the 'United States, will, we trust, not appeal in vain to the generosity of the two richest countries in the world. The nature of his demand, as well as his detachment from party politics, are a guarantee that aid can be offered without giving rise to any diplomatic dculties.
