THE CATASTROPHE 81
control of the Russo-Polish frontier. They stand facing east-
wards, ready to fire. They are on the look-out for Russian
citizens in hiding near by, who cast longing looks at the river.
. . . They are Ukrainian peasants who, driven by hunger,
cover hundreds of miles in bands and stream towards the
frontier. They seek safety in flight. . . . Their faces are pale as
though marked by death. Their bodies are clothed in rags.
They are more like mummies than living beings. . . . They
wander about at some distance from the river, awaiting a
favourable opportunity to get across. No Ukrainians may be
placed on sentry duty here, for they might be moved by
sympathy and compassion to turn away and give their fellow-
countrymen an opportunity of escaping from a dreadful fate
in the Soviet Union. The Ukrainians are hungry, barefooted
and ragged—as helpless as any living creature could be. They
were driven by torturing hunger to leave the places where
they once worked happily. They have fled to beg their bread
across the frontier. Once other peoples lived on the superfluity
of their rich and blessed country."
What is said here of the Ukrainian refugees is equally true
of all the other groups of refugees, such as the Germans
who fled into Manchuria, or the Jews who escaped to Persia.
The fearful sufferings of the Jews have been described by The
Times correspondent at Teheran. He expressly states that they
undertook the terrible hardships of the flight to Persia only
because they were driven by misery and hunger.
The fate of the refugees from Russia is undoubtedly a
particularly tragic chapter in the history of the famine victims
in the Soviet State. Imagine that parties of German settlers
escaped, not only into Manchuria, but some even across the
Pamir mountains into India. The sufferings of these refugees
are often not at an end even when they have crossed the
frontier. A group of German settlers who had succeeded in
reaching Harbin had to live for a month in the criminal and
prostitutes' quarters of that city. The greatest efforts had to be