At the present time, a number of American newspapers are printing [a series of] articles written by Thomas Walker, an American newspaperman, who recently returned from his travels in Soviet Russia. Walker smuggled some pictures he had taken in the Ukraine across the border. These snapshots are really the documentary evidence of the famine conditions existing in the Ukraine among the peasants.

"Recently I traveled in the Ukraine where six million peasants have perished from hunger during the last eighteen months, just because most of the grain which they had gathered, was requisitioned by the Soviet government," writes Mr. Walker.

Further on the author says that throughout his travels he carried a camera with him. In order to avoid the suspicion of the border guards he threw the 2camera away some time before he left Russia, but he preserved the negatives and later smuggled them across the border.

He left Moscow in the spring of 1934 and together with other tourists visited a collective farm near Tambov. He considered this collective to be an exemplary one. He had noticed at the railway depot in Voronezh a large number of peasants at the station waiting rooms and had asked one of the guides why the peasants slept at the station and why they all were ragged. The answer was that they were all workers from the same factory who were on their way to the Crimea for their monthly summer vacation, and that their dress was quite suitable for the occasion. Since they were afraid of missing the train, they spent a sleepless night and quite naturally looked tired.

In the opinion of the author, the expression of agony and suffering on the peasants' faces did not suggest an impending rest in the Crimea.

Later on Walker decided to travel alone. He arrived in Belgorod, and from 3there went on foot to a collective farm located near the city. On the way he met a group of peasants with three horses. One of the horses was falling off its feet and the others were just as weak. The peasants told the tourist that the previous day they had gone to the collective farm and asked for some straw to feed the horses. They also wanted to fill a few barrels with water from the farm wells. Both requests were refused and they were ordered to leave the farm under threat of guns.

The same peasants told Walker that during the last year they had had enough bread for both themselves and the livestock, but that it was taken away from them by a detail of Red soldiers. Two of the peasants were married, and had seen their children die during the famine of 1932-33. Walker left the peasants when they began to tear the hide from a fallen horse. On the collective farm, the author witnessed another scene which he recorded on his film. A special permit was granted to allow the peasants to pick up the grains of wheat which had fallen from the sacks. Nothing can be done without permission. One of the peasants, he relates, was shot by the guards when he [was caught] gleaning the field within a forbidden area. Other peasants told Walker that a peasant died from hunger 4on a farm which produced thousands of bushels of wheat and other grain. The last desire of this dying peasant was to join the ranks of the Communist party so that when he died the party would lose one member.

This article by Walker was printed in yesterday's Chicago Evening American.