IN WAR-RUINED POLAND

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 277, 19 August 1919, Page 7

IN WAR-RUINED POLAND

STORY OF DEVASTATION.

Comparatively few people .'realise that Poland has sufterpd as greatly in the war as Belgium. This statement (says tho Warsaw correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor") refers chiefly to Galicia and Congress Poland, as Posen, or Prussian Poland, was untouched. Nowhere, however, were tho ravages of war greater or more terrible thaii ih'Eastern Poland, especially in tiho regions east of the river Bug. Here the whole land was laid waste by the Russians in their great retreat in 1915. ■ Crops ■ were burned, houses destroyed, and tens of thousands of the inhabitants driven off to Siberia by the Russian armies. The entire country was left desolate.

General Kenian, chief of tihe American section ,of thtr Inter-Allied Mission . to Poland, spent three days in motoring through these devastated regions, and he says that lie never witnessed mors complete de-solntion and pitiable conditions anywhero in the world. Whole villages were seen in wihich onl\ ; two' or three houses were inhabited. Tlio people wero in rags, they had only a few chickens, hardly ever a pig, and scarcely, anything to eat..'' They had no seed-corn nor farming implements, no prospects of raising any iooa supplies in the present year. 'Dliere seemed literally no hope for them. • And these conditions prevail over thousands of square miles of country where the land at best cannot be described as very fertile. Pinsk, the principal toU-n in this now barren region, ,was once a flourishing centre of industry, with a population of 60,000. It had large railway shops, soap works, and match and shoe factories. The Russians destroyed the railway and Ilia workshops, and the Germans completed the work bj tarrying off all the machinery from the other.factories.. To-day all industries are sluit down; the business life of the town is non-existent, and tha population has dropped from 60,000 to 25,000.

Of five big co-operative storc-s in Pinsb four are closed, and the fifth had nothing to sell but salt. jSearly all the other shops were closed; there was no meat iu the town and no potatoes. Hospitals and pool-houses and children's homes wero without bread. It is true 'there was a littlo black bread .of miserable quality to. be had in the lown, but it cost from five to nine Nicholas roubles for a onepound loaf, the Nicholas rouble'being tf-orth at the present rate of exchange ninepefice. The old and tho young were the greatest sufferers, lacking nearly everything in the way of food and clothing.

The luosL appalliug feature in the whole sitti'.ition is that there is absolutely no possibility of any improvement m these conditions before next year. Tho old inhabitants of tile country aro beginning to return in great numbers, but thoy come back to ruined homes, bringing nothing for their reconstruction. Most of tlieni who have any money have, it in Kerensky roubles, which are nominally, only worth ihalf as much as the Nicholas" rouble. But these Iverensky roubles are not recognised as legal tender in Poland at all, and if the Polish Government continues lo rule them out these people will be. penniless. Thev havo no seedcorn, no potatoes, no horses, no farming tools or implements of any kind. They can raise nothing from the land tihis sea-t-on, and speedy and generous help must come from outside.