To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

Sir,—Will you kindly allow me to express, through your columns, my sincere gratitude for a £5 note, sent to me for the poor starvelings of our famine-stricken provinces? Neither name nor address accompanying the donation, I should like every newspaper to reproduce these few lines. I should like everybody to realize the importance of that donation. This £5 note secures the lives of about fifty families for several days! Each penny represents a large loaf of bread, a speedy help. My son, Alexander Novikoff, a newly appointed Zemstvo Chief (Zemskoy Natchalnik) in the government of Tamboff, is the president of a committee, formed of local clergymen and landed proprietors, for the distribution of food, and the strictest precautions are taken that every farthing should be distributed to the famine-stricken only. Needless to add, that no difference is made between the victims. Starvation has neither nationality, nor creed, nor age, nor sex. Strange to say, in Christian England up till now, no material sympathy has been shown to our poor moribunds! The £56,000 announced by the Times might be doubled or tripled, without attenuating my statement or the pockets of the donors, as that large sum is offered to non-existing people. There are no “Jewish labourers” in the famine-stricken provinces; and in the few provinces where we have a few Jewish colonies there is no famine. OLGA NOVIKOFF.

Claridge’s Hotel, Oct. 26.