IN WAR-RUINED POLAND

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 278, 20 August 1919, Page 7

IN WAR-RUINED POLAND

STORY, OF DEVASTATION,

Comparatively few people realise tfhat Poland has suffered'as greatly in tho war as Belgium. This statement (says tho Warsaw correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor") r'efere chiefly to Galicia nnd Congress Poland, as Posen, or Prussian Poland, was untouched. Nowhore, however, wero the ravages of war greater or more-terrible than'ill Eastern Poland, especially-in the regions cast of, the river Bug. Here the whole land waa laid waste by the Russians in their great retreat ,in 1915. ■■ Crops wero 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 Kernan,.chief of the American section of tlier' Inter-Allied Mission to Poland,- spent; three days in motoring through these devastated regions, and lie says that he never witnossed mora complete desolation and pitiable conditions anywhere in the world. Whole villages wero seen in wlhich only two or three houses were inhabited. The people wero in rags, they had only a few chickens, hardly ever a pig, and scarcely anythin" to eat. They had no seed-corn nor farming implements, no prospects of raising any food supplies in tho present year. 'Hhere seemed literally no hope for thein. And these conditions prevail ovor thousands of square mile 3 of oountryi whei'o,tho land at best cannot bo d.oscribed as very fertile.

Piuek, the principal town in thi6 now barren region, ,was onco a flourishing oSntre of industry, with a population of 60,000. It had large railway shops, soap works, and match and shoe factories. Tha Eu6sinua destroyed the railway and the workshops, and the Germans completed the work by .carrying off all tho machinery from tno other luctories. To-day all industries are shut' down; the business life of tho town is non-existent, end tha population has dropped from 60,000 tj 25,000. "

Of'five big co-operativo stores in Pinsk four are closed, and tho fifth had nothing to sell but salt. Nearly all the other shops were closed; there was no meat in tho town and no potatoes. Hospitals and poorhouses and children's homes wero without bread. It is true there was a little black bread of miserable quality to be had in the town, but it cost from fivo to nino Nicholas roubles for a onepo'und loaf, the Nicholas rouble being worth at the present rate of exchange ninepenco. Tho old and the young were tho greatest sufferers, lacking nearly everything in the way of food and cloth* ing. . ..

The most appalling feature in tha whole situation is that (hero is absolutely no possibility of any improvement m tlieso conditions beforo next year. Tha old inhabitants of the country nro beginninj; to return in' fjreat numbers, but they come back to ruined homes, bringing nothing for their reconstruction. Most of them wlio have any money have, it in Kercnsky roubles, which. are nominally only worth lhalf as much as 'the Nicholas rouble. But (hesa ICerenskv roubles are not recognised as legal tender in Poland at all, and if the Polish Government continues to rule them out tlieso peoplo will be penniless. They linvo no seedcorn, no potatoes, 110 horses, no'farming tools or implements of any kind. Thoy can raise nothing from the land ilhis seaeon, and speedy and generous help must come from outside.