New Britain herald., 1915-12-28
RUSSIANS Al BURNED 2 POLISH VILLAGES
Germans Had to Provide Food and
 Shelter for Inhabitants


 that they not only had to support
 their own huge armies, but had also
 to provide food and shelter for an
 enormous number of Poles who had
 been driven away from their homes,
 and then later had been sent back
 to villages burned to the ground,
 villages in which there remained no
 single house standing, not one head
 of cattle and not one bushel of
 grain
 That the extent of the damage
 might be correctly estimated, a spe
 clal department to investigate the de-
 struction was formed at once. and
 oHlcers began tours of the country
 dlstrlcts to see how great the needs
 Of the returning inhabitants might
 be. They reported that the Russians
 not only had burned up all existing food supplies, but empty barns that , were to house the unilarvested crop. Cattle packed into freight trains had
 been destroyed by sendingthe trains been destroyed by sending the trains In individual cases special tracks had been laid, down which the cars were rolled to the waters edge
 Set Town in Flames.
 Bands of Russian soldiers, the in- vestigators claim, went syatematical- ly through each village that was to be abandoned, squirted petroleum over each house, and then set the town in flames. Between 5000 and 4,O0O villages were destroyed in this way. their Inhabitants being forced under penalty of death to flee to the east. Bribery played not important part in the retreat, it is claimed As conspicuous examples, there stand. l here and there throughout Poland lone houses that have not suffered at l sell. The inhab abitants maintain that l their immunity was purchased with roubles, or that they were left un- molested because they were Russian rather than Polish.
 Villages Ravaged Also. < The Germans up to date have been able to investigate only a part of the territory evacuated by the Rus sians. They fear that the estimates of many hundreds of thousands of fugitives who now are homeless will mount into the millions eventually The investigations show that only the houses along the regular lines of re- treat were destroyed, but also that villages far removed from the main east-west roads were ravaged also. The only exceptions are the compar- atively infrequent colonies of Rus sians as differentiated from Poles.
 In thousands the inhabitants were driven eastward, but when the Ger man pursuit became too hot the ci- ylians-including old men and wo- men-were ruthlessly turned to one side of the road and then ordered to go back in the hope that they would obstruct Germans.
 Died As They Returned.
 By tens of thousands the men and women who had been torn from their homes died as they returned. Their graves line miles of the roads in Po- land One German officer counted 927 civilian graves that bordered a single thoroughfare within a space of 20 kilometers.
 Eventually the refugees returned to the places where, for months, the Germans and the Russians had con- ducted trench warfare. In the lack of .anouses, the Poles sought the trenches and bomb-proof shelters as homes, and today are living in them to great extent. Supplied with the necessities of life by the Germans, they are cooking their meals in the bottoms of chimneys that still stand and slowly are building themselves 1 new homes.
 Prepare for Winter
 In anticipation of winter the Ger mans began cutting lumber from the Russian royal forests, and deliver Ing it to the homeless Poles. The Polish Architectural society formu- latedyplans for 1louSes-especially de- signed to house Polish peasant fami- lies and With a wing in which cattle could find shelter-and has supplied each homeless family with them. Sew eral hundred have overcome their , suspicion of the Germans, partly be- cause the house plans are promul- l gated by Poles, and have erected one , Story homes of wood which are vast ly more practical than their old ! thatched cottages. :
 The. destruction of the retreating :. country villages, but included also Russians was not confined to the every industrial plant in the king dom-regardless of whether it might be turned to military uses or not. s Thus, for example, the linen factory In Zhirardow, which was valued at 5,000,000 marks and which employed some 5000 Poles. The ownership of $ the factory was in Polish and Ger r han hands and in addition to the hands in the main factory, about ' 30,0O0 Poles were employed in the | branches, which went out of business a with the destruction of the parent 2 Eoncegn. T. 1... W