Maxim Gorky's Appeal to the American People

MAXIM GORKY'S APPEAL TO THI AMERICAN PEOPLE. Reprinted from the New York Times 23 July 1921. "Moscow, July 13. *To All Honést People: The com-growing steppes are smitten by crop failure, caused by the drought. The calamity threatens starvation to millions of Russian People. Think of the Russian people's exhaustion by the war and revolution, which considerably reduced its resistance to disease and its physical enjurance. Gloomy days have come for the country of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Meneleyev, Pavlov, Mussergsky, Clinka and other world-prized men, and I venture to trust that the cultured Buropean and American people, understanding the tragedy of the Russian people, will inmediately succor with bread and medicines. "If humanitarian ideas and feelings - faith in whose social im- port was so shaken by the damnable war and its victors* unmercifulness towards the vanquished - if faith in the creative force of these ideas and feelings, I gay, must and can be restored, Russia's misfortune of- fers humanitarians a splendid opportunity to demonstrate the vitality of umanitarianism. I think particularly warm sympathy in succoring the Rugsian people must be shown by those who, during the ignominious war so passionately preached fratricidal hatred, thereby w ithering the educational efficacy of ideas evolved by mankind in the most arduous 1