Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1915-07-26

and fired point blank at an advancing
foe, only to see him pitch forward and
hear him cry out In Polish, My God |
leave wife anj three children And
this agonizing dying cry in Polish
rang in the ears of the brother Pole
who had fred the shot, torturing him
night and day, until he literally went
mad and was taken from the ranks a
raving maniac.
ut was natural that the Russian
Pole should cast his lot with Russia.
and this loyalty has been rewarded by
the inspired proclamation of Grand
Duke Nicholas romisipng freedom for
Poland "a pledge which every Russian
Pole accepts in good faith as fore
shadowing the Identification of the
Polish nation. On the other hand the
Galician Poles showed a perfectly nat
ural first movement of allegiance to
Austria WHICH had given them the
right of their own faith and language
and some senplance of freedom. This
and the laws of compulsory military
service brought almost million Poles
| into the Austro- German ranks to fight
against their brothers in the Russian
ranks. And yet in both Austria and
Prussia the overwhelming majority of
the Poles are at heart solidly with the
kingdom of Poland"
When Mr.. Gibson of the Rockefeller
Foundation returned from Poland he
told Miss Alma Tadema of the terrible
scenes he had witnessed in the strick-
en- regions. Together they planned for
extensive measures of relief, to be
sent through Germany with the ap-
prevail of the British Foreign Office,
Germany consented, but the officials
here doubted the good faith of Ger
many's letting large supplies Of food
pass across Germany to Poland And
so the negotiations halted and now
another plan is on foot to get supplies
into Poland by way of Switzerland
without passing through German
hands.
One of the scenes Mr.. Gibson pictur-
ed was a Polish village where he pass
ed a cemetery and saw crowd col
lected. On inquiry he learned it was
the joint funeral of twelve children
who had died that day; and he learned
further that this was the normal av-
erage in this and other stricken vii
lages-twelve children a day dying of
starvation. At one point he noted ali
old woman who had crawled sixteen
kilometers to get a handful of black
bread. These were merely few in
stances out of great number which
led him to the conclusion that the des-
olation in the wake o fthe armies in
Poland was greater than that in Bel
GUM, where he had made a similar in
spection.
The Polish student group here is al
SO receiving mail advices from their
friends in the various parts Of Poland.
One Of the last posted of these student
letters summed up recent advices
which got through as follows:
"Out of $4,000 square kilometers in
old Poland, $4,000 square kilometers
have now been occupied by the Austro-
German armies. The departments
which have suffered most are Kaliska,
| Piotrowska, Kielecka, RadoWska, Sp-
wolska, and Plocka; also four dis
tricts of the government of Lonisyn-
sky, 10 districts of Warsaw, which is
a department half the size of Wales in
addition to the city of Warsaw, four
districts of Lubelskicj and five in Che
lmskiy. Out of 100000 inhabitants
of this region, 100000 have suffered.
Of $4,000 villagers, $500, or about 20
per cent are partially destroyed, and
another 1000 villages are completely
leveled to the ground, not trace Of
them remaining beyond the heaps OF
smouldering rubbish and ruin"
The peasantry are pictured as NOV
ing about uike great tribes of gypsies
over the blackened fields, carrying and