CHAPTER XXVII

THE TERRIBLE DISTRESS OF POLAND

A LONG-TORTURED NATION AGAIN BLIGHTED BY WAR -- DESOLATION AND FAMINE THROUGHOUT LAND -- RICH AND POOR ALIKE DESTITUTE -- PLIGHT OF RUSSIAN POLAND -- NO BREAD FOR WEEKS IN LODZ -- THREE TIMES A BATTLE-FIELD -- UNABLE TO HELP HERSELF -- NO SEED AND NO DRAFT ANIMALS.

“If you imagined all the people of New York State deprived of everything they owned, left a prey to starvation and disease, and hopelessly crushed under the iron heels of contending armies, you might form a slight idea of what the Poles are enduring at present,” declared the great pianist, Paderewski, while visiting America in 1915 in the interests of the afflicted nation. “One of the worst phases of the situation lies in the inability of the inhabitants of one-half of the country to communicate with those in the other. Compared with their lot, even that of the Belgians loses some of its horror, for my unhappy countrymen have no France, Holland, or England in which they can seek refuge.”

Girt by a ring of war, Poland in the winter and spring of 1915 was in the most terrible straits. Her cities and villages had been captured and recaptured by both Germans and Russians, her fields had been laid waste, and her inhabitants were slowly dying of starvation.

DESOLATION AND FAMINE THROUGHOUT LAND

“If figures can give any idea of the immensity of this disaster,” pleaded the great musician, “then these may convey a slight impression of what has gone on in Poland: An area equal in size to the states of Pennsylvania and New York has been laid waste. The mere money losses, due to the destruction of property and the means of agriculture and industry, are $2,500,000,000. A whole nation of 18,000,000 people, including 2,000,000 Jews, are carrying the burden of the war in the east on their backs, and their backs are breaking under the load. The great majority of the whole Polish people, about 11,000,000 men, women and children, peasants and workmen, have been driven into the open, their homes taken from them or burned, and they flee, terror-stricken, hungry and in confusion, whither they know not. In ruins, in woods or in hollows they are hiding, feeding on roots and the bark of trees. It is Christian humanity that calls for help for succumbing Poland.”

“From the banks of the Niemen to the summits of the Carpathians,” wrote the novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz, in his plea to the American people, “fire has destroyed the towns and villages, and over the whole of this huge, desolated country the specter of famine has spread its wings; all labor and industry have been swept away; the ploughshare is rusted; the peasant has neither grain nor cattle; the artisan is idle; all works and factories have been destroyed; the tradesman cannot sell his wares; the hearth fire is extinguished, and disease and misery prevail. To such starving people, crying out for aid, listen, Christian nations.”

RICH AND POOR ALIKE DESTITUTE

The Polish Relief Committee, headed by Madame Sembrich, published this word from the great tenor, Jean de Reszké, whose home is in Paris:

“My poor brother was unable to get away from the war zone in time. He wrote this letter several weeks ago, and now I fear he may never survive the terrible hardships. He had plenty of money and a splendid estate, but all were swept away.”

The letter referred to shows that there is no leveler like war. It runs:

“My dear brother, whether this will ever get through the lines and reach you I do not know. I am sure no man could get through alive, with all this fighting and the continual bombardment going on on every hand.

“The war broke with such suddenness that it was impossible to escape. I was forced to remain here on my estate in Garnesk. This part of Poland has been reduced to worse than a desert. All is desolate and every one is suffering. My beautiful estate has met the common fate and been reduced to ashes. I am now living in a cellar with scanty covering. If a shell should drop in it would afford no protection. So fierce has been the fighting here that there have been days when I could not venture forth. We have been between two fires. All Poland needs relief.

“I have no coal, oil, coffee, and only a handful of grain left. Through the cold and the rain I have had but poor shelter, but my lot is the same as that of my fellow countrymen here. Every one is in want; every one is suffering. Many are dead, and many more will die unless aid reaches them soon. Prince Lukouirski and his wife recently reached here and are sharing my cellar with me. Their own beautiful estate has been destroyed, and even the cellar blown to atoms by the shells.”

PLIGHT OF RUSSIAN POLAND

Mr. Herbert Corey, writing from Berlin to the New York Globe, in the spring of 1915, declared that unless something was done the world would be horrified--if the world had not lost its capacity for horror--by the sufferings of the Poles. “Soon cholera will come to Poland. Famine is there now. Scarlet fever and typhoid and smallpox and enteric and typhus are old settlers.” The million now in utter want only live at all because “humanity has a wonderful capacity for adjustment to wretchedness.

“There are 6,000,000 Poles in the portion of Russian Poland that is being fought over. Of these, according to the Red Cross men, 1,000,000 are absolutely destitute. They are without food or the means to buy food. They are living on the charity of others who are but slightly better off. That charity must come to an end soon--because food is coming to an end. It is not merely that money is lacking. Flour is lacking. It must be imported or starvation follows.

“Russian Poland is a conspicuous example of Russian rule. No measure of self-government is permitted the people. All governing officials are appointed from Petrograd. Lodz, for example, a city which contains from 500,000 to 750,000 people--all statistics in Poland are mere guesses--is ruled by a mayor and four assistants, all sent out from Russia. No city may expend more than $150, American money, for its own purposes, except permission is secured from Petrograd. That permission is rarely given. Petrograd needs the taxes that Lodz pays. When permission is given it is long delayed. Therefore, Lodz, a town as large as St. Louis, has unpaved streets that are ankle-deep in mud in winter and ankle-deep in dust in summer. It has a privately owned and paid fire department that responds only to calls from its own clients. Ninety per cent of its residents live in sties on streets that are mere stenches.

“And yet Lodz is the second cotton-manufacturing town in Europe. It is excelled only by Manchester in its manufacturing totals. Isolated on the bleak plains of Poland, at a distance from a seaport, served by two railroads only, it is an anomaly in the commercial world.

NO BREAD FOR WEEKS IN LODZ

“For two weeks Lodz had no bread at all. For months it has had no meat at all--so far as the poorer classes are concerned. During those two weeks the mass of the population lived on potatoes.

“Conditions were slightly worse in Czenstochow, the second city in Russian Poland. Here 90,000 people live. It has no street-lights. It has no attempt at street-paving. It has no sewers. It has no city water. It has no publicly maintained fire department, though a few of the merchants have a department of their own. It is pre-middle-ages in everything--morals, discomfort, filth, darkness, disease, death-rate. Cholera is there all the time. Most of its people exist in reeking hovels, smoke-filled when they can afford fires, wet and cold at other times.

“As the towns grow smaller, conditions grow worse.”

THREE TIMES A BATTLE-FIELD

If the war had not come, these people would have prospered after a fashion. Potatoes were plentiful, and they had few other wants. A woman earned thirty cents a day in the mills and a man three cents more. Children worked as soon as they were old enough. Sixty-five per cent are wholly illiterate. Then--

“Russia struck at Germany. The German armies invaded Poland in retaliation. They swept almost to Warsaw--and an invading army sweeps fairly clean. There were some things left when they passed over. They were driven back, and the Russian armies covered this territory--and they gleaned what was left. Then the Russians were driven back--sacking as they went--and the Germans covered the ground once more. Three times unhappy Poland has been fought over. It had little at the beginning. It has nothing now. For months Poland has been starving, not merely going hungry. That is a commonplace of war. Poles have been dying because they cannot get food.

UNABLE TO HELP HERSELF

“Poland is quite unable to help herself. Most of the mills--probably all of the mills--are owned by Russian and German and French capitalists. The banks are all branches of foreign institutions. These concerns are all conducted by resident managers. Some of the managers have--on their own responsibility--given their work people two and a half and three cents a day each for food. Some have added a trifle for the children also. But this has practically come to an end. The managers have exhausted their supply of cash. They cannot get more. There are no mails. The towns of Poland are each printing their own paper money--not by consent of the Russian bureaucrats, but in defiance of them--but this money circulates only within the town’s borders. It is highly improbable it will ever be redeemed in real money. Meanwhile the price of food commodities has risen fifty per cent in two months. By the time this reaches America the prices may have doubled.

NO SEED AND NO DRAFT ANIMALS

“Conditions are slightly better in the agricultural sections. The farmers have no seed and no draft animals, it is true. But they have fairly good supplies of potatoes. Last year’s potato-crop was an enormous one.

“There is a Jewish question in every city of Poland. Where there is a Jewish question in Russia there are riots. There will be more rioting in Poland unless Providence intervenes. Russia has always confined her Jews to the pale. Being forced to make their living by trading, their naturally sharp wits have been whetted. Today they are--broadly speaking--owners of every shop in Poland. There may be Christian shopkeepers here and there. People who know Poland doubt it.

“Beggars follow the stranger in the Polish cities. Some of them are mute. They only look at the stranger through hollow eyes and hold out skinny hands. Others are vociferous. They cling to the garments of the passer-by. They cry for aid in an uncouth dialect. They run out from darkened doorways. The man who gives is pursued by a cue of them.”