252 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
here he is the victim of the figures, explanations and con-
clusions offered or suggested by Moscow.
The statements emanating from M. Herriot still continue to
be printed by various newspapers and are taken as correct by
numbers of credulous persons desiring to form an opinion on
Russian conditions—more especially on the famine. For this
reason I am compelled to deal with two particularly important
points in his most recent effusions. The first point is his manner
of dealing with the reports of famine in the Ukraine. He
begins by declaring categorically: "There is no country about
which more nonsense has been written of late than Russia. The
primary reason for this consists in political fanaticism; for some
Russia is the object of a kind of mystic cult, while for others it
is a land of terror." "At present/3 he continues, "a regular
propaganda campaign is in progress aiming at the dissemination
of a belief in famine in the Ukraine."
Now M. Herriot cannot be conceded the right publicly to
deny the existence of famine in the Ukraine and to represent
it to be "propaganda by political fanatics." His assertions that
on the present occasion when "travelling through" the Ukraine
"in various directions95 he saw "nothing of the kind" (contrary
to his experience ten years previously) are meaningless. To-day
we know that during the five days of his triumphal progress
through the Ukraine M. Herriot took part in a number of
banquets, receptions and inspections arranged in his honour,
and that on his visit to one Soviet farm and two collective
farms he had an opportunity of admiring the technical achieve-
ments which he was shown, including the use of aeroplanes
for sowing. But he did not take the trouble, as a serious investi-
gator, on whom the eyes of the world were fixed, should have
made it his duty to do, to follow up the visible traces of one
of the greatest human tragedies of the present day, a tragedy
which had reached its climax in the days preceding the new
harvest, immediately before his arrival. Such an investigation
would have meant leaving his special coach, escaping his Moscow