REFUGEES Prayers for the Departed
The 17,870-ton steamship Rossia wallowed in the fog at Marseilles' rickety pier G. At her stern, a red flag hung limply in the November drizzle; on her funnel was the hammer and sickle.* Above the monotonous slap of the waves came occasional harsh orders, the melancholy strains of a Russian song.
Below decks were 1,740 refugees, the human jetsam tossed up by two wars and their attendant revolutions and hatreds. Some were pro-Soviet Russians who had been imprisoned by the Germans; some were White Russians with Nansen passports; some...