Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

in life waned, and playing and running became a thing of the past. Their cheeks grew more hollow and their frail bodies more thin from day to day, until they were little more than skin and bones. But unexpectedly, one morn- 230 FEEDING THE HUNGRY ing there was a striking change in the boy of ten. His cheeks seemed fuller and his thin limbs had greatly in- creased in size during the night. Every day his face, limbs, and especially his abdomen grew plumper. He complained less than before, he spoke less, and hardly moved from his little cot. What could this mean? It was swelling from starvation, the forerunner of a speedily following death. Soon some of the other children showed similar symptoms, and still there was no relief in sight. The parents had almost forgotten their own hunger in their concern for their children, but why could father not wear his old torn shoes any more? ‘They had always been amply large and now they were too small. Cruel evidence that he too had but a few more weeks to live, unless relief came speedily and soon. The natural course of such families was that they soon passed away in rapid succes- sion. Usually first the men and the boys would go, and then the women and girls would follow. In the famine areas, statistics show that about three times as many males as females died of starvation. Why this is so has not been fully explained, but practically the same ratio held true among those that died of starvation among the Mennonites. After the swelling had set in, it was usually only a matter of days or weeks until the soul would quietly take flight and leave the remnant of a physical body behind. Death was so common that those who still lived, showed no excitement or heavy concern any more, if another one or a group had passed during the night. In one village, whose inhabitants were largely Jewish farmers, we were halted with our car in the mud, which gave us an oppor- tunity to converse with the group that gathered about us. We requested a little assistance of a number of boys who stood around. They replied, “We cannot. We are VIZUALIZING FAMINE CONDITIONS 231 starved.” Again we asked, ‘Have some already died of hunger in your village?” They answered, “Yes, many.” “What will then become of you?” whereupon they replied without evident alarm or concern, ‘‘We will all starve to death.” While the number that actually died of starva- tion in the Mennonite villages was not large, since effective help from America came just in time, the case was different in many Russian villages where the people died out up to forty, fifty, sixty and even a higher percent. Some vil- lages were reported to have died out almost entirely. RAILROAD STATION SCENES The trains in Russia during the famine periods were regularly overcrowded. I have seen them. when the cars were packed to capacity within, the roof of the car carried another twenty to thirty persons, and as many as could,