Potosi Journal

ARISTOCRATS OF RUSSIA PEDDLERS
Once Haughty Officers of Old Regime Are Now Penniless in Turkish Capital.

ONE TRAGEDY OF GREAT WAR
Every Street in Constantinople Is Crowded With Refugees From Russia--Wives and Daughters in Odd Occupations

Constantinople--When Russia was a mighty nation under her czars it was the proud dream of many in Constantinople.

One of the great tragedies of the European war.

The allies and especially France, believing in and advanced money for an army on the march in Russia, to beat down the Bolshevik government and substitute one that would be in harmony with western Europe.

The last of these mercenary armies was the one led by General Wrangel, who at one time was master of the Crimea.

But as soon as the Bolsheviks secured peace with Poland, they scattered Wrangel to smithereens. It was one of the greatest scrambles in history.

Soldiers and their leaders, clinging to their wives and families, clamored for ships to carry them away before the avenging Bolsheviks came in.

The vessels which finally arrived for the refugees were jammed beyond human endurance.

Filled With Refugees.

Thousands of the worst sufferers of this page of recent history were brought to Constantinople.

Every street in Constantinople is crowded with them.

Near this city you may see broad faced Mongolians and Kalmuck Tartars, who were once in Wrangel's army, working on the railway tracks.

In the city itself the Russians have largely turned to peddling.

Their wives and sisters and daughters have taken to waiting in little restaurants or washing dishes or scrubbing floors or doing manual washing.

Many have been forced by sheer want into insanity and there are thousands who have no visible means of support. They sell nothing. They do not work. They simply walk the streets idly.

That they have neither shirt nor undershirt, overcoat in this bleak winter weather many of these go shoeless with great, long, heavy overcoats whose collars and sleeves are trimmed with thick astrakhan.

Shift for Themselves.

Men who were once officers in the czar's army and later in Wrangel's forces still go about with their epaulets on shoulders. Often one has a wicked-looking Russian officer's dagger at his side.

It would seem that with this great influx of ex-soldiers of adventure, made desperate by want, there would be a great increase of petty crimes. But the 2,000 Turkish police have held crime in check.

For a considerable period the French authorities undertook to feed the Russian refugees, the only stipulation being that they should seek to make themselves self-supporting.

But work was the very thing that the great majority of these did not want.

They seemed to think the allies were under some sort of obligation to subsist them for life. The result was that the French felt compelled to withdraw all assistance and allow them to shift for themselves--Milton Brown, in Chicago Post.