Khortiza, February 16, 1920

The process of physical recuperation is very slow. It is no wonder. During convalescence the body demands, after a long time of fasting, double and triple rations. That is the reason why all who were sick, in meeting each other complain about their unappeasable hunger and praise the good old times when bread, meat, eggs, and milk were in abundance. Finally one gets crazy about that question of our future. We all, without exception, see darkness there, or—a question mark. What will become of us?—

Yesterday my poor hosts took two orphans. They are children of their relatives. Their parents had a big, fine farm and were wealthy. They are dead now. The horses and the cattle are stolen. The buildings are burnt. In seeing these young boys in their worn-out clothes you would hardly imagine it all. One is seven, the other nine years old.

They were but a few hours in the house when the youngest boy came in a great hurry to his new stepmother, crying and repeating all the time, “They are coming, they are here already!” He had seen armed men on the street. At this sight there had been recalled to his soul the memory of that fatal visit at home, when his father and his seventeen-year-old brother had been put to death before his eyes. His memory was still filled with vivid pictures of assassination.

We tried to calm him by saying that these men were Bolsheviks and did not belong to those robbers who would kill everybody.

Oh, the children! We are afraid of thinking of their future! Their number is so large. These colonists multiplied more than any people on the whole earth. Anthropologists will admit that. These colonists had no restriction in regard to the number of children. As a matter of fact, there could be found very few families with less than seven children, unless the parents were still young. Very often the members of a family number over twelve.

But now the problem of feeding and clothing has become a great one to us. If fathers and mothers were alive the problem would be much less weighty. But they were attacked by that insidious malady so severely that they offered no resistance to death.